Hours after two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli drone strike in southern Gaza amid a fragile ceasefire, Hamas handed over the bodies of another prisoner to Israel.
The Israeli military announced Monday that the Red Cross was taking custody of the coffin and it was being transported to military units in the Gaza Strip.
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Under the terms of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that took effect on October 10, Hamas promised to return the bodies of all 28 dead prisoners. As of Monday, 16 bodies had been handed over.
The 20 surviving prisoners were released on October 13 as part of an armistice.
The release of the latest bodies comes as families of some prisoners called on the Israeli government to suspend the ceasefire if Hamas fails to find and hand over the bodies.
“Hamas knows exactly where all the deceased hostages are being held,” the Hostage and Missing Families Forum said.
“The families call on the Israeli and U.S. governments and mediators not to move forward with the next steps in the agreement until Hamas fulfills all its obligations and returns all hostages to Israel,” the association added.
The statement echoed Israeli government claims that Hamas knew the whereabouts of the bodies.
Hamas negotiator Khalil al-Haya said on Saturday there would be “difficulties” in locating the prisoners’ bodies because “the occupation has changed the topography of Gaza.”
He suggested that some of those who buried the bodies had died during the war and some had forgotten where they were buried.
A day after al-Haya’s remarks, Israel allowed an Egyptian technical team to enter Gaza to help find the bodies. Excavators and trucks will be used in the search.
Despite the ceasefire, at least two people were killed in an Israeli drone attack near the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis on Monday, Nasser Hospital said.
A total of eight Palestinians have been killed and another 13 injured in Israeli attacks across the enclave over the past 48 hours, the Gaza Health Ministry said on Monday. It added that at least 68,527 people have been killed and 170,395 injured since Israel’s war in Gaza began in October 2023.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking on board Air Force One on Monday, suggested that Israel had not violated the cease-fire agreement by carrying out attacks on members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group on Saturday.
“We do not consider it a violation of the ceasefire,” he said, accusing the targets of planning attacks on Israeli forces. “If there is an imminent threat to Israel, they have a right, and all the mediators agree to that.”
More than two weeks after the ceasefire began, some 473,000 people have returned to northern Gaza, facing widespread destruction of property and severe shortages of basic necessities such as food and water, according to the United Nations.
Younis al-Khatib, chairman of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, warned that Gaza residents still face the same desperate humanitarian emergency they faced before the ceasefire.
“Rebuilding a human being is harder than rebuilding a destroyed house,” he said in a meeting with Norway’s prime minister and foreign minister in Oslo, noting that residents will need mental health care for years to come.
The World Health Organization also warned that the number of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip needing mental health support has increased from about 485,000 to more than 1 million after Israel’s two years of war.
According to the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF, nearly all children living in enclaves need such support. UNICEF said that over the past two years Gaza has become “the world’s most dangerous place for children.”
Tess Ingram, the group’s spokeswoman in Gaza, said the reason for this was the “huge numbers of children killed, injured, displaced, separated from their families (or) left without loved ones.”
“One class of children was killed every day for two years in this conflict, and the scars they endured will last for years to come,” Ingram told Al Jazeera from the southern Almawashi region.
