Israel has received, via the Red Cross, a coffin that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) say contains the body of one of the last three deceased hostages still in Gaza, according to the Israeli prime minister’s office.
Israeli forces will now transfer the bodies to Israel’s National Centre of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv for identification.
Earlier, PIJ and Hamas announced that the body of an Israeli hostage had been found in central Gaza on Monday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office warned that it viewed “with severity the delay in the immediate transfer” of the body, saying it constituted a “further violation” of the six-week-old Gaza ceasefire agreement.
Following the handover in central Gaza on Tuesday afternoon, the office announced that the families of the three dead hostages had been updated accordingly.
“Our hearts are with them in this difficult hour,” it added. “The effort to return our hostages is ongoing and will not cease until the last hostage is returned.”
Under the first phase of the US-brokered ceasefire deal, which took effect on 10 October, Hamas agreed to return the 20 living Israeli hostages and the bodies of the 28 dead Israeli and foreign hostages still in Gaza within 72 hours.
All the living hostages were released on 13 October in exchange for 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,718 detainees from Gaza.
So far, the remains of 22 dead Israeli hostages have been handed over, along with those of three foreign hostages – one of them Thai, one Nepalese and one Tanzanian.
In exchange, Israel has handed over the bodies of 330 Palestinians killed during the war.
Two of the three remaining dead hostages are Israelis – Ran Gvili, 24, and Dror Or, 48 – and one is Thai – Suthisak Rintalak, 43.
Israel has accused Hamas of deliberately delaying the recovery of the bodies, while Hamas has insisted it is struggling to find them under rubble.
The slow progress has meant there has been no advance on the second phase of President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan. This includes plans for the governance of Gaza, the withdrawal of Israeli troops, the disarmament of Hamas and reconstruction.
The dead hostages still in Gaza were among the 251 people abducted during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, during which about 1,200 other people were killed.
Israel responded by launching a military campaign in Gaza, during which more than 69,770 people have been killed, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.