Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "Israel received, through the Red Cross, the coffin of a slain person who was handed over to the army and Shin Bet (General Security Service) forces inside the Gaza Strip."
Netanyahu added in a statement from his office: "From there, he will be transferred to Israel where he will be received in a military ceremony, and then he will be transferred to the Institute of Forensic Medicine of the Ministry of Health. When the identification process is completed, the family will be officially notified."
The Israeli army said in a brief statement Wednesday evening: "According to information provided by the Red Cross, the coffin of one of the abductees was handed over to them as they were on their way to one of our forces in the Gaza Strip."
He added via his account on the American company "X" platform: "The Israeli army requests that we act with sensitivity and wait for official verification of the identity of the kidnapped person who will be handed over."
The army continued: "Hamas must abide by the agreement and make every effort to bring back the dead hostages."
Thus, since the start of the agreement, Hamas has released the twenty living Israeli prisoners and the bodies of 23 prisoners out of 28, while Tel Aviv previously claimed that one of the bodies received did not match any of its prisoners.
Israel is conditioning the start of negotiations to launch the second phase of the agreement on receiving the remaining bodies of the prisoners, while Hamas asserts that it will take time to retrieve them due to the massive destruction in Gaza.
In contrast, there are 9,500 missing Palestinians killed by the Israeli army, whose bodies remain under the rubble left by the Israeli war of extermination, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza.
More than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, including children and women, are held in Israeli prisons, where they suffer torture, starvation, and medical neglect. Many of them have been killed, according to Palestinian and Israeli human rights and media reports.
The ceasefire agreement halted an Israeli war of genocide on Gaza that began on October 8, 2013, leaving 68,875 Palestinian martyrs and 170,679 wounded, most of them children and women, with reconstruction estimated by the United Nations to cost around $70 billion.
