Israel has received two bodies that Hamas says are two more deceased hostages who had been held in Gaza.<\/p>\n
The Israeli military said two coffins were handed over to troops in the Palestinian territory by the Red Cross, which had earlier received them from Hamas. <\/p>\n
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the coffins – which were escorted by the military – had crossed into Israel and will be taken to be formally identified in Tel Aviv. <\/p>\n
Confirmation of their identies would mean that Hamas has transferred 15 out of 28 deceased Israeli hostages under the first phase of a US-brokered ceasefire deal earlier this month. All 20 living hostages were released shortly after the agreement was reached.<\/p>\n
Hamas has handed over a Palestinian body in a previous hostage transfers, which it said was accidental due to difficulties locating the bodies.<\/p>\n
The IDF urged the Israeli public on Tuesday evening to “act with sensitivity and wait for the official identification, which will first be provided to the families of the hostages”.<\/p>\n
It also stressed that “Hamas is required to uphold the agreement and take the necessary steps to return all the deceased hostages”.<\/p>\n
Israeli officials said the families of the hostages will be notified once the bodies are identified.<\/p>\n
There has been outrage in Israel that Hamas has not yet returned all the deceased hostages. <\/p>\n
The Palestinian group says it is trying to do this but that it faces difficulty finding bodies under rubble of buildings bombed out by the IDF in Gaza.<\/p>\n
Under the ceasefire and hostage release agreement, Israel has freed 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,718 detainees from Gaza, and returned 15 bodies of Palestinians for every Israeli hostage’s remains.<\/p>\n
The first phase of the agreement has also seen an increase of aid into Gaza, a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces, and a halt in fighting – though deadly violence flared up over the weekend as both sides accused one another of breaching the terms of the deal.<\/p>\n
The IDF launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and took 251 others hostage.<\/p>\n
More than 68,000 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are seen by the UN as reliable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel has received two bodies that Hamas says are two more deceased hostages who had been held in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-95943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}