DaysofPal – The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, announced that they had discovered the body of an Israeli soldier east of Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighborhood during ongoing excavation and search operations inside the “yellow zone.” The group said preparations were underway to hand over the remains to Israel.
The discovery came as a joint team from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Al-Qassam Brigades resumed their search for the bodies of Israeli captives in Shujaiya for the third consecutive day.
According to local sources, technical equipment and vehicles from the Egyptian technical committee have been assisting the mission, helping locate a site believed to contain the remains of several Israeli soldiers.
A team member described the operation as “extremely difficult and complex” due to the extensive destruction in the area, which was heavily bombarded during what Palestinians call Israel’s genocidal war that leveled much of the Shujaiya district.
On Monday, Israel announced that it had identified the remains of three of its soldiers received from Hamas through the Red Cross a day earlier. Among them was Colonel Asaf Hamami, the highest-ranking officer captured by Al-Qassam during the conflict.
With this handover, Israel has now received 18 bodies of captured soldiers out of a total of 28, most of them Israeli nationals. Tel Aviv had previously claimed that one of the bodies received did not match any of its missing personnel. In addition to these transfers, Hamas has also released 20 Israeli captives alive under the same agreement.
The handovers are part of the first phase of a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel that began on October 10, under a plan proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration has openly supported Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Israel has conditioned the start of negotiations for the second phase of the agreement on receiving the remaining bodies of its soldiers. Hamas, however, insists the process will take time given the vast destruction across the Gaza Strip.
About 9,500 Palestinians are still unaccounted for, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office, and are thought to be buried beneath the debris left by Israel’s ongoing conflict. Over 10,000 Palestinians are imprisoned in Israel, including women and children, many of whom face torture, starvation, and medical neglect, conditions that have led to numerous deaths, according to Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations.
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