receives

Body identified as Israeli soldier Hadar Goldin with the remains of four other deceased captives still in Gaza.

Israel has received the body of a soldier held in Gaza for more than a decade after he was killed in an ambush by Hamas fighters in 2014 during the last major ground assault on the Palestinian enclave.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Sunday the remains were handed over to Israeli forces in Gaza by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) after Hamas transferred the body to the aid organisation.

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Formal identification of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, 23, was confirmed by Israeli forensics teams.

At the start of a weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said holding the body for so long has caused “great agony for his family, which will now be able to give him a Jewish burial”.

“Lieutenant Hadar Goldin fell in heroic combat during Operation Protective Edge,” Israel’s leader said.

The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, said the body was retrieved on Saturday from a tunnel in the Yebna refugee camp in Rafah in southern Gaza.

Goldin was killed on August 1, 2014, two hours after a ceasefire took effect and ended that year’s war between Israel and Hamas. He was part of an Israeli unit tasked with locating and destroying Hamas tunnels.

Another Israeli soldier, Oron Shaul, was also killed in the six-week war, and his body was returned earlier this year.

There are now four deceased abductees remaining in Gaza to be returned under the terms of a ceasefire that began last month. Hamas has so far released 20 living captives and 24 bodies.

For each body returned, Israel has been releasing the remains of 15 Palestinians. Ahmed Dheir, director of forensic medicine at the Nasser Medical Complex in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, said 300 bodies have now been returned and 89 identified.

Israeli attacks continue

Israel has also released nearly 2,000 living Palestinian prisoners since the October 10 truce began. Palestinian authorities said more than 10,000 people still remain in Israeli detention.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health said 241 Palestinians have been killed and 619 wounded since the ceasefire began and 528 bodies have been recovered from under rubble and at attack sites.

Despite the truce, Israel’s military continues to carry out attacks across the Gaza Strip. On Sunday, one man was killed in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, and two died in separate assaults in the north and south, the Health Ministry said.

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in the Far’a refugee camp near Tubas while Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian farmers in several areas, according to local reports.

According to Israeli authorities, Palestinian armed groups captured 251 people during Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and killed at least 1,139 people.

Israel began its war in Gaza on the same day. It has killed at least 68,875 Palestinians and wounded 170,679, according to the Health Ministry.

Palestinians with Civil Defense team members search for victims amid the rubble of the Habib family home, which was struck in an Israeli airstrike on central Gaza City on October 29, 2025, in violation of the ceasefire. File Photo by Palestinian Civil Defense Press Service/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 2 (UPI) — Israel has received the bodies of three more captives from Hamas and taken them to the National Institute for Forensic Medicine to be examined and identified, the Israeli Defense Forces said Sunday.

The IDF said in a statement that the bodies were presented by Hamas in three caskets to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which collected them and delivered them to Israeli soldiers inside Gaza. The bodies were then escorted across the border into Israel.

“The IDF urges the public to act with sensitivity and wait for official identification, which will first be communicated to the families of the deceased hostages,” the IDF said.

Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades said Saturday that it was ready to exhume the bodies of the three captives from inside the yellow line and had offered to hand them over to Israel.

Since entering a ceasefire with Hamas in October, Israel has carried out multiple operations beyond the yellow line, which marks the boundaries for Israeli troop deployment under the deal, shooting and bombing Palestinians in areas outside Israeli control.

Hamas has considered these to be violations of the ceasefire agreement.

On Friday, Hamas had returned the partial remains of three people, but Israel said that forensic testing revealed that the bodies did not belong to any of the Israeli captives.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian affairs said Sunday that it continues to operate health facilities in Gaza, with work including the screening of young children for malnutrition.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Sunday that he had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which they agreed that “humanitarian aid must reach the people of Gaza safely and in sufficient quantities.”

Meanwhile, the family of a Palestinian held captive by Israel for 27 years said he faced a severe health decline, Al-Jazeera reported.

He was arrested in April 1997 and received multiple life sentences.

Palestinian media also reported Sunday that Israeli forces continued to raid several areas across the occupied West Bank, detaining a child in Tubas, as Israeli settlers plowed through Palestinian land in the town of Idhna in preparation to seize and annex it.