Israel receives coffin that Hamas says contains Gaza hostage’s body

Israel has received via the Red Cross a coffin which Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) say contains the body of one of the last two deceased hostages still in Gaza, according to the Israeli prime minister’s office.

Israeli forces will now transfer the bodies to Israel’s National Institute of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv for identification.

PIJ’s military wing announced earlier that it had found a hostage’s body in northern Gaza.

The handover came hours after the Israeli prime minister’s office said tests showed another set of remains received from Hamas on Tuesday did not belong to either of the dead hostages.

One of the two men is Ran Gvili, a 24-year-old Israeli police officer and the other is Suthisak Rintalak, a 43-year-old Thai agricultural worker.

Israeli and Thai authorities say both were killed during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023 and that their bodies were then taken to Gaza.

Under the first phase of the US-brokered ceasefire deal, which took effect on 10 October, Hamas agreed to return the 20 living Israeli hostages and the bodies of the 28 dead Israeli and foreign hostages still in Gaza within 72 hours.

All the living hostages were released on 13 October in exchange for 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,718 detainees from Gaza.

So far, the remains of 23 dead Israeli hostages have been handed over, along with those of three foreign hostages – one of them Thai, one Nepalese and one Tanzanian.

In exchange, Israel has handed over the bodies of 345 Palestinians killed during the war.

Israel has accused Hamas of deliberately delaying the recovery of the hostages’ bodies, while Hamas has insisted it is struggling to find them under rubble.

The slow progress has meant there has been no advance on the second phase of President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan. This includes plans for the governance of Gaza, the withdrawal of Israeli troops, the disarmament of Hamas and reconstruction.

The two dead hostages still in Gaza were among the 251 people abducted by Hamas and its allies on 7 October 2023, when about 1,200 other people were killed.

Israel responded to the attack by launching a military campaign in Gaza, during which more than 70,100 people have been killed, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.