The Israeli military has confirmed that the fourth body delivered by Hamas on Tuesday night does not match any of the captives held by the group. In a statement, the army said that after forensic examinations by the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, «the fourth body delivered by Hamas does not correspond to any of the captives.»
The statement further urged Hamas to «make all necessary efforts to return the remains of the deceased captives.» This comes after Hamas, as part of the ceasefire agreement with Israel, delivered four additional bodies on Tuesday, claiming they belonged to captives.
However, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated earlier that only three of the bodies delivered were identified as belonging to captives whose families had already been notified. The bodies identified by the National Institute of Forensic Medicine were those of captives Eitan Levy (53 years old), soldier Tamir Nimrodi (20 years old), and Uriel Baruch (35 years old).
According to the statement, there are still 21 captive bodies remaining in the hands of Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip. The delay in the delivery of these bodies, which was anticipated during the negotiations of the ceasefire agreement due to the tons of debris in Gaza, prompted the Israeli government to threaten to restrict the entry of humanitarian aid through the Rafah crossing yesterday.
Despite the threat, the entry of aid trucks from the Egyptian Rafah crossing to the Israeli Kerem Shalom and Al Auja crossings, through which entry into the Gaza Strip is allowed, resumed on Wednesday, a day after the crossings were closed, according to Egyptian television Al Qahera News.
Hamas sources have warned of the difficulties in recovering the bodies due to the devastation after the Israeli attacks and the fact that commanders of the organization who knew their location have died. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has stated that the delivery of the remains to their families «could take much longer» due to the difficulty of finding these human remains, «which may be under the rubble.»
The Gaza Ministry of Health estimates that, in addition to the more than 67,000 deaths recorded, another 10,000 are under the rubble of buildings in the Strip.
