Palestinian armed group Hamas has said it has repatriated all the deceased hostages that it could reach to Israel
Hamas has delivered the remains of two more dead hostages to Israel overnight, increasing the overall number of returned bodies to nine, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said. This development follows the release of the last 20 living Israeli captives on Monday, which was part of a deal brokered by the US, Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey in exchange for the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.
The armed group delivered seven corpses of dead captives to Israel on Tuesday, although the Jewish state said one of them belonged to a Palestinian. On Wednesday night, Hamas handed over the remains of two more deceased captives through the Red Cross, which were identified in Tel Aviv as Inbar Haiman and Muhammad el-Atrash, the IDF reported.
Haiman, a 27-year-old student from Haifa, was among those killed by Hamas at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023. Her body was abducted to Gaza, and she was the last female hostage, dead or alive, being held in the enclave. El-Atrash, 39, who served in the Northern Brigade of the IDF’s Gaza Division, was also killed on the same day, with his body taken by Hamas fighters.
Hamas claimed it had fulfilled its part of the deal by releasing all living hostages and delivering the bodies of all deceased captives it could reach. The group emphasized that it required “great effort and special equipment to search for” the remains of the other 19 dead hostages, stating it was making “great efforts to resolve this issue.”
The office of Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz maintained that Hamas should release all 28 bodies, warning that failure to do so would result in Israel, in coordination with the US, resuming fighting and acting to achieve a total defeat of Hamas, thus altering the reality in Gaza and fulfilling the objectives of the war.
Some 1,200 people were killed and 250 others taken hostage during the Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023. The IDF’s retaliatory attacks in Gaza have claimed more than 67,000 lives and left almost 170,000 wounded, according to the local health authorities.