The Red Cross received the remains of two more Hamas hostages Wednesday, hours after the Israeli military said one of the bodies previously turned over was not that of a hostage held in Gaza, adding to tensions over the fragile truce that has paused the two-year war.
The Israeli military said the International Committee of the Red Cross received the remains, which were to be transferred to Israeli forces in Gaza. Military officials said earlier Wednesday that forensic testing showed “the fourth body handed over to Israel by Hamas does not match any of the hostages.” There was no immediate word on whose body it was.
The confusion over identification complicated implementation of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. As part of the deal, four bodies of hostages were handed over by Hamas on Tuesday, following four on Monday that were returned hours after the last twenty living hostages were released from Gaza. In all, Israel has been awaiting the return of the bodies of twenty-eight hostages.
Meanwhile, the Gaza Health Ministry said it received forty-five more bodies of Palestinians from Israel, another step in implementation of the ceasefire agreement. That brings to ninety the total number of bodies returned to Gaza for burial. The forensics team examining the remains said they showed signs of mistreatment.
Sameh Hamad, a member of a commission tasked with receiving the bodies at Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital, said some arrived with their hands and legs cuffed. “There are signs of torture and executions,” he told The Associated Press.
The bodies belonged to men ages twenty-five to seventy, Hamad said. Most had bands on their necks, including one that had a rope around the neck. Most of the bodies wore civilian clothing, but some were in uniforms, suggesting they were militants.
Hamad said the Red Cross provided names for only three of the dead, leaving many families uncertain of their relatives’ fate. The fighting has killed nearly sixty-eight thousand Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government in Gaza. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.
Thousands more people are missing, according to the Red Cross and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
As forensic teams examined the first remains returned, the Health Ministry on Wednesday released images of thirty-two unidentified bodies to help families recognize missing relatives. Many appeared decomposed or burned. Some were missing limbs or teeth, while others were coated in sand and dust. Health officials have said Israeli restrictions on allowing DNA testing equipment into Gaza have often forced morgues to rely on physical features and clothing for identification.
Rasmiya Qudeih, fifty-two, waited outside Nasser Hospital, hoping her son would be among the forty-five bodies transferred from Israel on Wednesday. He vanished on October 7, 2023, the day of the Hamas-led attack that triggered the war. She was told he was killed by an Israeli strike. “God willing, he will be with the bodies,” she said.
In exchange for the release of the hostages, Israel freed around two thousand Palestinian prisoners and detainees Monday.
Israel is expected to turn over more bodies, though officials have not said how many are in its custody or how many will be returned. It is unclear whether the remains belong to Palestinians who died in Israeli custody or were taken from Gaza by Israeli troops. Throughout the war, Israel’s military has exhumed bodies as part of its search for the remains of hostages.
The ceasefire plan introduced by U.S. President Donald Trump had called for all hostages, living and dead, to be handed over by a deadline that expired Monday. However, under the deal, if that did not happen, Hamas was to share information about deceased hostages and try to hand them over as soon as possible.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel “will not compromise” and demanded that Hamas fulfill the requirements laid out in the ceasefire deal about the return of hostages’ bodies.
Trump, in an interview with CNN, warned that Israel could resume the war if he feels Hamas is not upholding its end of the agreement. “Israel will return to those streets as soon as I say the word,” Trump said.
Hamas’ armed wing said in a statement Wednesday that the group honored the ceasefire’s terms and handed over the remains of the hostages it had access to. Hamas and the Red Cross have said that recovering the remains of dead hostages was a challenge because of Gaza’s vast destruction, and Hamas has told mediators that some are in areas controlled by Israeli troops.
Two hostages whose bodies were released from Gaza were being buried Wednesday.
This is not the first time Hamas has returned a wrong body to Israel. During a previous ceasefire, the group said it handed over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two sons, among those taken in Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, in which some twelve hundred people were killed and two hundred fifty-one abducted. Testing in February 2025 showed that one of the bodies returned was identified as a Palestinian woman. Bibas’ body was returned a day later.
The World Food Program said its trucks began arriving in Gaza after the entrance of humanitarian aid into Gaza was paused for two days due to the exchange on Monday and a Jewish holiday Tuesday.
The timing of the scaled-up deliveries, which are part of the ceasefire deal, had been called into question after Israel said Tuesday that it would cut the number of trucks allowed into Gaza, saying Hamas was too slow to return the hostages’ bodies.
Abeer Etefa, spokesperson for the World Food Program, lauded the trucks’ passage but said the situation remained unpredictable. “We’re hopeful that access will improve in the coming days,” she said.
The Egyptian Red Crescent said four hundred trucks carrying food, fuel and medical supplies were bound for Gaza on Wednesday. COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, declined to comment on the number of trucks expected to enter Gaza on Wednesday.
“Throughout this crisis, we have insisted that withholding aid from civilians is not a bargaining chip,” U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said in a statement.
The confusion over body identification and the discovery of apparent mistreatment of Palestinian remains in Israeli custody have complicated what was already a tenuous ceasefire implementation. The exchange of remains represents one of the most sensitive aspects of the agreement, with families on both sides desperate for closure after more than two years of conflict.
Associated Press original story
