Israel hands over bodies of 30 Palestinians, Gaza hospital officials say

Israel has handed over the bodies of 30 Palestinians, Red Cross and hospital officials in Gaza said on Friday, a day after Palestinian group returned the remains of two hostages to Israel.

A doctor at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis confirmed receiving the bodies and said they were all unidentified. The Red Cross said that its teams had facilitated the transfer.

The exchange was the latest indication that the fraught Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement is moving forward, despite Israeli strikes on Gaza this week that killed more than 100 people following the killing of an Israeli soldier.

Ahmed Al Farra, head of the pediatric unit at Nasser Hospital, confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday morning that the hospital received the unidentified bodies of 30 Palestinians from Israel.

Photos showed the remains, in white body bags, arranged in rows inside the grounds of Nasser Hospital. Health officials have struggled to identify bodies without access to DNA kits.

The return brings the number of Palestinian bodies returned by Israel to 225, only 75 of which have been identified by families, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. It is unclear if those returned were killed in Israel during the Oct.7, 2023, attack that triggered the war, died in Israeli custody as detainees or were recovered from Gaza by troops during the war.

The bodies returned had been "torn apart and exhumed,” Munir Al Bursh, director general of Gaza’s Health Ministry, said in a post on X.

"Their flesh had melted, their faces erased by fire, leaving behind only bones and teeth,” he said.

Al Bursh said recently that many of the bodies handed over appear to be fighters or others killed during the 2023 attack. Several relatives who have identified the bodies of family members said they weren’t fighters.

Hamas has now returned the remains of 17 hostages since the start of the ceasefire, with 11 others still in Gaza and set to be turned over under the terms of the agreement.

On Friday a small crowd of Israelis gathered in the plaza known as Hostages Square, praying together for the return of the dead hostages still in Gaza.

"We cannot give up until everybody, all the bodies, will be here," said Rimona Velner, a Tel Aviv resident who joined the gathering. "It’s very important to the families and for us ... to close this circle.”

A senior US official and a second source familiar with negotiations said that in messages passed to Hamas by mediators on Wednesday, Israel warned the militant group that its fighters had 24 hours to leave the yellow zone or face strikes.

That deadline passed on Thursday evening, after which the senior US official said "Israel will enforce the ceasefire and engage Hamas targets behind the yellow line.” Hamas did not respond to a request for comment.

On Friday, Shifa hospital director Mohamed Abu Selmiya said that one person had been killed by Israeli gunfire in northern Gaza. Israel's military said its troops had fired after the person approached troops in a way that posed a threat.

In the central West Bank town of Silwad on Friday, mourners thronged the streets for the funeral of Yamen Hamed, 15, who Palestinian health officials say was shot by an Israeli soldier overnight. Samed Yousef Hamed kissed his son goodbye.

Samed said his son left home Thursday to hang out with friends. Soon after, he learned the teen had been injured and Israel's army was preventing an ambulance from reaching him. Ahed Smirat, the ambulance driver who tried to reach Hamed following the shooting, told the AP that troops held him up multiple times. By the time they let him through, troops told him the teen had died, he said.

The shooting is the latest in a surge of military killings of Palestinian children in the West Bank that has accompanied a general upswing in violence in the territory since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Some were killed during Israeli military raids in dense neighborhoods, others by sniper fire in peaceful areas.
The killings have risen as the Israeli military has stepped up operations in the occupied West Bank since the war’s onset in what it calls a crackdown on militants.

Associated Press