A Red Cross vehicle arrives at the site where members of the Hamas militant group work on searching for bodies of the hostages in an area in Hamad City, Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Friday.Abdel Kareem Hana/The Associated Press
Israel has received the coffin of a missing hostage handed over to the Red Cross from Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Friday.
The Israeli military and security forces received the coffin inside the Gaza Strip, and it was to be transferred to Israel and the Ministry of Health’s National Center for Forensic Medicine. After a formal identification process, the family will be informed.
The handover came after Hamas’s military wing said it will hand over the body of a hostage that was pulled out Friday to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The statement from the Qassam Brigades, as the armed wing of Hamas is known, said the remains were that of an “occupation prisoner,” suggesting they belonged to an Israeli rather than one of the hostages of several other nationalities also taken in Gaza.
Earlier, the Israeli military said the coffin of the deceased hostage was on the way to troops in Gaza, as Hamas worked to shore up a tenuous ceasefire by using bulldozers to help search for bodies the group says remain trapped under rubble.
The Israeli military and Shin Bet security service said the official identification of the remains would first be provided to the families, before adding: “Hamas is required to uphold the agreement and take the necessary steps to return all the deceased hostages.”
Hamas has said it is committed to the terms of the ceasefire deal, including the handover of bodies. This week, Hamas has handed over to Israel the remains of nine hostages, along with a 10th body that Israel said wasn’t that of a hostage.
Here's what you need to know about Gaza and the Israel-Hamas war, including the ceasefire deal, the toll of the war so far and what comes next.
The effort to find bodies followed a warning from U.S. President Donald Trump that he would green-light Israel to resume the war if Hamas doesn’t live up to its end of the deal and return all hostages’ bodies, totalling 28.
In a statement earlier Friday, Hamas said some hostages’ remains were in tunnels or buildings that were later destroyed by Israel, and that heavy machinery is required to dig through rubble to retrieve them. It blamed Israel for the delay, saying it had not allowed any new bulldozers into the Gaza Strip.
Most heavy equipment in Gaza was destroyed during the war, leaving only a limited amount as Palestinians try to clear massive amounts of rubble across the territory.
On Friday, two bulldozers plowed up pits in the earth as Hamas searched for hostages’ remains in Hamad City, a complex of apartment towers in the city of Khan Younis. Israeli forces repeatedly bombarded the towers during the war, toppling some, and troops conducted a week-long raid there in March, 2024, fighting militants.
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Hamas urged mediators to increase the flow of aid into Gaza, expedite the opening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and start reconstruction. It also called for work to “start immediately” on setting up a committee of Palestinian independents who will run the Gaza Strip and for Israeli troops to continue pulling back from agreed-upon areas.
The ceasefire plan introduced by Mr. Trump had called for all hostages – living and dead – to be handed over by a deadline that expired Monday. But under the deal, if that didn’t happen, Hamas was to share information about deceased hostages and try to hand them over as soon as possible.
Mr. Netanyahu has said that Israel “will not compromise” and demanded that Hamas fulfill the requirements laid out in the ceasefire deal about the return of hostages’ bodies.
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Hamas has assured the U.S. through intermediaries that it’s working to return dead hostages. American officials say retrieval of the bodies is hampered by the scope of the devastation, coupled with the presence of dangerous, unexploded ordnance.
The militant group has also told mediators that some bodies are in areas controlled by Israeli troops.
At a news conference with his German counterpart in Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan expressed concerns that Israel might use Hamas’ “lack of equipment” to recover bodies as a pretext to resume hostilities.
Hamas released all 20 living Israeli hostages on Monday. In exchange, Israel freed around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
In Israel, the Hostage and Missing Families Forum – which groups many families of hostages – said they will continue holding weekly rallies until all remains are returned.
Israel has also returned to Gaza the bodies of 90 Palestinians for burial. Israel is expected to turn over more bodies, though officials have not said how many are in its custody or how many will be returned.
A Palestinian forensics team examining the remains said some of the bodies showed signs of mistreatment.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government in the territory. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts. Thousands more people are missing, according to the Red Cross.
In the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, militants killed around 1,200 people and took some 250 hostage.
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France said it’s working with Britain and the U.S. to propose a UN resolution in the coming days that would provide a framework for the international force for Gaza.
French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux told a news conference Thursday that Arab countries want a UN mandate for the force. Arab countries are expected to be among those contributing troops to the force, which will oversee Egyptian-trained Palestinian police.
Mr. Confavreux said details on funding, equipment and which countries will participate still need to be worked out.
The UN says the flow of aid remains constrained because of continued closings of crossings and restrictions on aid groups.
The UN dashboard tracking movement of UN-co-ordinated aid trucks into Gaza shows 339 trucks have been off-loaded for distribution since the ceasefire began a week ago. Under the ceasefire agreement, 600 humanitarian aid trucks would be allowed to enter Gaza daily.
Crossings were closed Monday and Tuesday for the exchange of hostages and prisoners and a Jewish holiday.
COGAT, the Israeli defence body overseeing aid in Gaza, reported 950 trucks – including commercial trucks and bilateral deliveries – crossing on Thursday and 716 on Wednesday, according to the UN office for the co-ordination of humanitarian aid.
Tom Fletcher, who heads that office, said in a social media post that UN humanitarian teams are executing a 60-day plan to massively scale up aid. Still, he warned that the “challenges ahead are immense,” and urged the opening of more crossings to allow more aid and workers into Gaza.
The UN World Food Programme said on Friday it has brought about 560 tonnes of food per day on average into Gaza since the Israel-Hamas ceasefire took effect, but convoys were struggling to reach famine-struck Gaza City due to war-damaged roads and continued closures of key northern aid routes.
Reuters
Fletcher entered the Israeli side of the Kerem Shalom crossing from Egypt and then drove to Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where he visited the UN World Food Program’s Castle Bakery, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said.
“The ceasefire has meant that the bakery can access fuel and flour, allowing it to produce up to 300,000 loaves of pita bread per day,” Mr. Dujarric said.
Since last Saturday, WFP has sent more than 280 trucks, weighing some 3,000 metric tons, into Gaza to support bakeries, nutrition programs and general food distributions, the food agency said.
Nahed Sheheiber, the head of Gaza’s private truckers’ union, which organizes pickups of entering aid after Israeli inspection, says improved security in Gaza has helped prevent looting or gangs intercepting aid convoys – even if there has been no significant increase of supplies arriving since the ceasefire. He said only 70 trucks went in Thursday.
Gaza’s more than 2 million people are hoping the ceasefire will bring relief from the humanitarian disaster caused by Israel’s campaign. Throughout the war, Israel restricted aid entry to Gaza, sometimes letting in only a trickle, and it completely barred food from entering for two months earlier this year to pressure Hamas to free hostages.
Famine was declared in Gaza City, and the UN says it has verified more than 400 people who died of malnutrition-related causes, including more than 100 children.
Israel says it let in enough food, accusing Hamas of stealing much of it. The UN and other aid agencies deny the claim.