An army spokesman told AFP that forensic analysis ruled out the remains of three bodies being among the 11 bodies awaiting repatriation to Israel.
Hebrew media reported earlier today that the remains of the three bodies that Hamas handed over to Tel Aviv via the International Committee of the Red Cross on Friday evening do not match any Israeli prisoners in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army radio confirmed that "the security establishment does not consider this a violation by Hamas" of the ceasefire agreement that came into effect on October 10, and the radio said: "We are talking about samples that were not presented from the beginning as definitively the remains of prisoners, and it was preferable to transfer them to Israel for examination as a precaution."
She explained that assessments in Israel indicated "from the beginning that the probability of these remains belonging to Israeli prisoners is very low, and this is what the prisoners' families were informed of." Army Radio noted that Israel "prefers to continue receiving future samples in the possibility that they may be related to other prisoners."
The private Hebrew Channel 13 reported on Friday evening that "Hamas informed the Red Cross that it does not know the owners of these three bodies, but suggested that Israel disclose them."
For its part, the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, announced on Saturday that its teams are ready to work on extracting the bodies of the occupation’s prisoners inside the Yellow Line and in multiple areas simultaneously, demanding that mediators and the International Committee of the Red Cross provide the necessary equipment and teams to retrieve all the bodies.
Al-Qassam added in a statement via Telegram that it had handed over samples of unidentified remains as a batch and offered to facilitate the handover process, noting that the handover of the samples was aimed at "cutting off" the occupation's claims.
As part of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, Hamas handed over 20 live Israeli prisoners and the remains of 19 prisoners out of 28, as of Thursday, most of whom were Israelis, according to what it announced.
But Tel Aviv had previously claimed that one of the bodies received did not match any of its prisoners, while on Tuesday it announced that it had received the remains of an Israeli prisoner whose body it had recovered earlier and buried in Israel.
Israel is conditioning the start of negotiations to launch the second phase of its agreement with Hamas on receiving the remaining bodies of prisoners, while the movement asserts that it will take time to retrieve them due to the massive destruction in Gaza.
Last week, Israel allowed the entry of equipment to search for the bodies of slain prisoners, according to Hebrew media, while preventing the entry of heavy machinery into the Gaza Strip to retrieve thousands of bodies of Palestinians missing under the rubble of homes destroyed during the war.
The Gaza Government Media Office estimates, according to its latest figures, that 9,500 Palestinians are missing, either buried under the rubble of destroyed homes or their fate remains unknown. More than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, including children and women, are also are held in Israeli prisons, where they suffer torture, starvation, and medical neglect. Many have died, according to Palestinian and Israeli human rights and media reports.
The ceasefire agreement, according to the plan of US President Donald Trump, ended a two-year Israeli war of extermination on Gaza that began on October 7, 2023, with the support of Washington, and left more than 68,000 martyrs and more than 170,000 wounded.
