Body of deceased captive has crossed border from Gaza, Israeli military says
A coffin containing the body of a deceased captive has crossed the border from Gaza into Israel, the Israeli military says.
It said that the body, escorted by Israeli troops, was on its way to the National Institute for Forensic Medicine for identification.
Recovering remains of captive held since 2014 expected to prove challenging
This latest body was retrieved after four full days of digging, of excavating in the Shujayea neighbourhood – a neighbourhood that has been under the control of the Israeli military for months.
Yet it took assistance from an expert Egyptian team and coordination with the Red Cross for Hamas to be able to locate and exhume this body.
This is the fourth body of a captive retrieved from that area. After this return, there will be six bodies of captives left in Gaza, including the remains of two foreign nationals, as well as the body of Hadar Goldin, who was killed in 2014.
His name has been the focus of a lot of attention in Israel, because it is estimated that it might be very difficult to locate and return his remains.
That’s significant because Israel insists it will not deliver on its commitments under phase one of the ceasefire agreement, and ease the restrictions on the crossings and so forth, until all the bodies are returned.
"On 1 August during the 2014 Gaza War, Givati Brigade Lieutenant Hadar Goldin reportedly was taking part in an operation to decommission a tunnel belonging to militants.[20] Hamas militants reportedly emerged from a tunnel and attacked an Israeli patrol in Rafah.[21] Killing two Israeli soldiers, the militants returned to Rafah through a tunnel, bringing the body of Goldin with them.[22]"
Israel to return bodies of 15 Palestinians to Gaza in exchange for latest captive’s remains
Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, Israel will hand over 15 of the estimated hundreds of dead Palestinians from Gaza it holds, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh reports.
It is not known what will happen to the rest of them, she said.
As we reported earlier, officials at Gaza’s Health Ministry say the bodies of Palestinians returned by Israel have been so badly decomposed that teams are struggling to identify them.
Bodies of unidentified Palestinians returned from Israel as part of the ceasefire deal are buried in a mass grave in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza
