Hamas announces it will hand over to Israel this afternoon a new body of a hostage found today

The Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, announced that they will hand over to Israel at 5:00 p.m. this Wednesday (12:00 GMT), through the mediation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the remains of a new hostage as part of the ceasefire agreement. In its statement, the Palestinian militia claims that the remains were found today in the northern Gaza Strip.

This new installment comes after Israel confirmed this morning that the body handed over last night by the Palestinian group did not belong to either of the two remaining hostages in the enclave, that of Israeli soldier Ran Gvili and that of Thai Sudthisak Rinthalak.

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“After completing the identification process at the National Center of Forensic Medicine, it was determined that the findings brought yesterday for analysis from the Gaza Strip are not linked to any of the deceased hostages,” the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reported this morning. The truth is that on other occasions, the bodies handed over by the Gazan militias have not corresponded to any captive in the Strip. The tons of rubble in Gaza from more than two years of Israeli bombings, added to the lack of heavy machinery, have complicated the search for the bodies of the captives, as the Palestinian militias have been denouncing. If it is confirmed that on this occasion the body does belong to one of the hostages, Israel, as stipulated in the ceasefire agreement, must return 15 bodies of Palestinians to Gaza. Israeli authorities also hold hundreds of bodies of Palestinians that they have been retaining since October 2023, when they launched their offensive in Gaza in retaliation for Hamas attacks. Many of these Palestinian bodies have been returned to Gaza with signs of torture and mistreatment, as reported by the enclave’s Ministry of Health in photographs accessed by EFE. In any case, once this exchange of bodies concludes, it is expected that indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel will resume to address the second phase of the agreement, which includes the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops, the disarmament of Palestinian militias, the reconstruction of Gaza, and the creation of a transitional government.