Hamas said in a statement that “returning the bodies of the Israeli prisoners may take some time, as some of these bodies were buried in tunnels destroyed by the occupation, and others are still under the rubble of buildings bombed and demolished,” adding that “the Nazi occupation army that killed these prisoners is the same one that caused them to be buried under the rubble.”
The movement continued by stating that the bodies of the Israeli prisoners that the resistance was able to access were handed over immediately, "while extracting the remaining bodies requires equipment and devices to remove the rubble, which are currently unavailable due to the occupation's ban on their entry." It emphasized that "any delay in handing over the bodies is the sole responsibility of the Netanyahu government, which is obstructing and preventing the provision of the necessary capabilities."
Hamas, meanwhile, stressed its commitment to the agreement and its commitment to implementing it "and to handing over all remaining bodies, while Netanyahu continues to stall and not abide by his obligations, and even obstructs the resistance's efforts and humanitarian efforts to reach the remaining bodies."
In a separate statement, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem expressed his astonishment at what he called "the world's weeping over the bodies of a number of Israeli soldiers," while "it turns a blind eye to the bodies of tens of thousands of our Palestinian martyrs lying under the rubble, or those that evaporated, or those that the criminal occupation prevented from being buried and were eaten by dogs."
On October 10, the first phase of a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement between Hamas and Israel took effect. This agreement is based on US President Donald Trump's plan to end the war in Gaza.
In implementation of the agreement, Hamas released the 20 living Israeli prisoners and handed over the bodies of 10 of the 28, most of whom were Israeli. In return, Israel released 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and 1,718 others it had arrested in the Gaza Strip after October 8, 2023. More than 10,000 Palestinians remain in its prisons.
According to the latest figures, the Ministry of Health in Gaza received the bodies of 120 Palestinian martyrs released by Israel as part of the prisoner exchange deal. These bodies were returned without any identification, and the ministry is currently working to identify them using primitive methods.
Israel is preventing the entry of heavy equipment into the Gaza Strip, having destroyed what was available during the war of genocide. This has forced rescue teams to work with primitive hand tools. The lack of equipment has prevented these teams from rescuing hundreds of Palestinian victims still trapped under the rubble.
In the two-year genocide Israel waged on the Gaza Strip, beginning on October 7, 2023, it killed 67,967 Palestinians and injured 170,179 others, most of them children and women. It also caused a famine that claimed the lives of 463 Palestinians, including 157 children.
