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Israel returned the bodies of 15 Palestinians to Gaza on Friday, officials at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said, in the latest step to fulfilling the terms of the fragile U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement.
The bodies were returned after militants late Thursday handed over the body of one of the last four remaining Israeli hostages taken during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that launched the war in Gaza.
Israel identified the returned body as that of Meny Godard, who was abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri in southern Israel. His wife, Ayelet, was killed during the attack.
The armed wings of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad said Godard’s body was recovered in southern Gaza.
The remains of 25 hostages have been returned to Israel since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 10. There are still three more in Gaza that need to be recovered and handed over. Hamas returned 20 living hostages to Israel on Oct. 13.
For each hostage returned, Israel has released the remains of 15 Palestinians, an exchange central to the ceasefire’s first phase. Overall, the number of bodies of Palestinians received so far is 330, of which only 95 have been formally identified, according to Gaza Health Ministry officials.
Health officials in Gaza have said identifying the remains handed over by Israel is complicated by a lack of DNA testing kits.
The bodies of 27 unidentified Palestinians were interred in Gaza on Friday.
As winter settles over Gaza and the first rains begin, displaced families are struggling to keep their makeshift shelters from collapsing under the weather.
As cloudy skies Friday threatened another downpour in Gaza City, Abdel Rahim Halawa, a father of seven children, worked to fasten a tarp over his tent made of wood, blankets and sheets of plastic.
“All of the mattresses and blankets got drenched this evening. If more rain comes on us, we don’t know how we can live anymore,” he said.
