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Israel received a coffin through the Red Cross that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) said contained the body of one of the last two deceased hostages still in Gaza, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.
The Israeli army will now transfer the body to the Israeli National Institute of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv for identification.
PIJ’s military wing earlier announced that the body of a hostage had been found in northern Gaza.
Israel’s prime minister’s office said tests showed another set of remains received from Hamas on Tuesday did not belong to two hostages who died. After a few hours, the handover was complete.
One of the two men was 24-year-old Israeli police officer Ran Gvili, and the other was 43-year-old Thai agricultural worker Suthisak Rintalak.
Israeli and Thai authorities said the two men were killed in a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and their bodies were later flown to Gaza.
Under the first phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement that came into effect on October 10, Hamas agreed to return within 72 hours the 20 living Israeli hostages still in Gaza and the bodies of 28 dead Israeli and foreign hostages.
On 13 October, all living hostages were released in exchange for 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,718 detainees from Gaza.
The remains of 23 Israeli hostage victims have been handed over so far, along with three other hostages – one Thai, one Nepali and one Tanzanian.
In exchange, Israel handed over the bodies of 345 Palestinians killed in the war.
Israel accuses Hamas of deliberately delaying the recovery of the hostages’ bodies, while Hamas insists it is working to find the hostages beneath the rubble.
Slow progress means no progress has been made on the second phase of President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan. This includes plans for Gaza governance, Israeli withdrawal, and Hamas disarmament and reconstruction.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas and its allies abducted 251 people, including two dead hostages still in Gaza, and about 1,200 people were killed.
Israel launched military operations into Gaza in response to the attack, which killed more than 70,100 people, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry.
