Israel receives the bodies of two hostages from the Red Cross after accusing Hamas of violating the peace agreement and bombing Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the Israeli army received from the Red Cross in Gaza the coffins that allegedly contain the bodies of two hostages previously returned by Hamas.

"Israel has received, through the Red Cross, the bodies of two deceased hostages who were handed over to the Army and Shin Bet forces inside the Gaza Strip. From there, they will be transferred to Israel, where they will be received with military honors by the Chief Rabbi of the Army," reads the statement released by Netanyahu's office.

The Islamist group Hamas said hours earlier in a statement that it had recovered the bodies of two Israeli hostages, Amiram Cooper and Saher Baruch, on Tuesday, and had assured earlier that it would return one of the bodies. However, in light of the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza that took place from Tuesday afternoon into Wednesday morning, the militant group postponed the handover.

The group searched for Cooper for 13 days in a tunnel in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, until they finally found his body. He died at the age of 85 during his captivity in Gaza, and while Israeli media outlets such as Yedioth Ahronoth report that he died when the tunnel in which he was being held collapsed due to bombing , others maintain that he was murdered by his captors.

The Saudi channel Al Hadath claimed on Tuesday that Al Qasam found a second body in the tunnel, although it did not specify whether it was Baruch's.

Saher Baruch, 25, also died in Gaza, and the Israeli army acknowledged in January 2024 that it was during a failed rescue operation.

The armed forces then claimed they could not determine whether Baruch had been killed by Hamas or by the troops' own fire on December 8.

Now, Israel's forensic institute will be in charge of identifying the bodies.

On other occasions, Hamas has returned bodies that did not correspond to any of the 13 remaining hostages in the enclave. The latest case occurred on Monday night, when the militia returned the remains of a deceased person whose body the army had already removed from Gaza in 2023.

This, coupled with the fact that the discovery of his body had been staged by Hamas and the death of a soldier in an alleged attack by the Islamists in the south of the Strip, became one of Israel's arguments for bombing Gaza on Tuesday.