The Gaza Ministry of Health confirmed that those bodies were returned to Palestine in exchange for the remains of Israeli officer Hadar Goldin, killed in Gaza in 2014, and repatriated on Sunday.
“The Ministry of Health acknowledges the receipt of 15 bodies of martyrs released today by the occupying power, Israel, through the Red Crescent (Red Cross in the region), bringing the total number of bodies received to 315”, reads a statement.
According to the same source, those bodies were returned to Palestine in exchange for the remains of Israeli officer Hadar Goldin, killed in Gaza in 2014, and repatriated on Sunday.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) previously confirmed that the remains handed over by Hamas to the Red Cross belonged to a soldier killed in combat in 2014, Hadar Goldin.
“IDF representatives have informed the family of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin that his body has been repatriated for burial,” the Israeli Army confirmed in a statement published on its account on the X social network.
In the last few hours, the Hamas confirmed having found Goldin’s body in Rafah, whose remains had been withheld since he died in an ambush in August 2014.
Hamas has complained on several occasions since the ceasefire came into effect on October 10 that the Israeli armed forces are not allowing it access to Rafah, where it believed the soldier’s body was located.
With the delivery of Goldin’s body there now remain four others, apparently all dead, in the hands of Hamas.
On Saturday, health authorities in the Gaza Strip said that more than 69,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, had been killed in the war between Israel and Hamas, sparked by Hamas attacks in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
The Palestinians killed around 1,200 people and took more than two hundred hostages.
