Israel has received the body of a soldier who had been held in Gaza for more than a decade. The soldier was killed in an ambush by Hamas fighters in 2014 during the last major ground assault in the enclave.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced on Sunday that the remains were handed over to Israeli forces in Gaza by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) after Hamas transferred the body to the aid organization.
Formal identification of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, 23, has not yet been confirmed by Israeli authorities. At the start of a weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that holding the body for so long had caused “great agony for his family, which will now be able to give him a Jewish burial.”
“Lieutenant Hadar Goldin fell in heroic combat during Operation Protective Edge,” Israel’s leader added.
The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, reported that the body was retrieved on Saturday from a tunnel in the Yebna refugee camp in Rafah, located in southern Gaza.
Goldin was killed on August 1, 2014, two hours after a ceasefire took effect, ending that year’s war between Israel and Hamas. He was part of an Israeli unit tasked with locating and destroying Hamas tunnels.
Another Israeli soldier, Oron Shaul, was also killed in the six-week war, and his body had been returned earlier this year.
If the body is confirmed to be Goldin’s, four deceased abductees will remain in Gaza to be returned under the terms of a ceasefire that began last month. Hamas has so far released 20 living captives and 23 bodies. For each body returned, Israel has released the remains of 15 Palestinians.
Ahmed Dheir, director of forensic medicine at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, stated that 300 bodies have been returned so far, with 89 identified.
**Ongoing Conflict and Prisoner Releases**
Since the October 10 truce began, Israel has released nearly 2,000 living Palestinian prisoners. However, Palestinian authorities say that more than 10,000 people still remain in Israeli detention.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 241 Palestinians have been killed and 619 wounded since the ceasefire began. Additionally, 528 bodies have been recovered from under rubble and attack sites.
Despite the truce, Israel’s military continues to carry out attacks across the Gaza Strip. On Sunday, one man was killed in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, while two others died in separate assaults in the north and south, the Health Ministry reported.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in the Far’a refugee camp near Tubas. Israeli settlers also attacked Palestinian farmers in several areas, according to local reports.
Israeli authorities report that Palestinian armed groups captured 251 people during Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and killed at least 1,139 people. Israel launched its war in Gaza on the same day.
Since then, the Israeli military has killed at least 68,875 Palestinians and wounded 170,679, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
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