Israel checks identities: Hamas reportedly handed over four dead hostages

The remains of four dead Hamas hostages have arrived in Israel and are now being examined. Israel has "received the coffins of four dead hostages via the Red Cross," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on Thursday. After being handed over to the Red Cross, the coffins were transferred to an army unit at the Israeli Kerem Shalom border crossing under Egyptian mediation. "A preliminary identification process" was then initiated on Israeli soil, it said. The results are not yet known.

As requested by the Israeli government, the handover was not staged as a spectacle with armed Hamas fighters and loud music during the handover of the coffins. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, an agreement had been reached with the Islamists in advance. His government had made this a prerequisite for the release of other Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.

In return for the handover of the dead hostages, around 600 Palestinian prisoners are to be released. According to eyewitnesses, a first bus with dozens of prisoners drove from the Ofer military prison in the occupied West Bank towards Ramallah, while hundreds of others were taken to the Gaza Strip, according to media reports. The Arab television station Al-Jazeera showed footage of them being greeted with jubilation when they were reunited with their relatives.

The prisoners - including 50 with life sentences - were originally supposed to be released on Saturday last week in exchange for six Israeli hostages. However, angered by Hamas' ceremonies during previous handovers of living and dead hostages, the Israeli government has suspended the releases for the time being.

Still 59 Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip

According to media reports and relatives, the bodies now handed over are believed to be the remains of four Israeli men between the ages of 50 and 86. Three of them were kidnapped from two Jewish settlements near the border with the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023. The fourth man was killed that day in an attack by Hamas and other Islamist terrorists on southern Israel, and his body was taken to Gaza.

During a previous handover of dead hostages, the Israeli investigation had revealed that one of the bodies was that of a woman from Gaza – and not the remains of the German-Israeli Shiri Bibas .