Israel received the remains of two more hostages on Wednesday (October 15, 2025), hours after the Israeli military said that one of the bodies previously turned over was not that of a hostage. The confusion added to tensions over the fragile truce that has paused the two-year war.

The remains were transferred by the Red Cross from Hamas. After the two coffins arrived in Israel, the military in a statement cautioned that the hostages’ identities had yet to be verified.

Meanwhile, the Gaza Health Ministry said it received 45 more bodies of Palestinians from Israel, another step in implementation of the ceasefire agreement. That brought to 90 the total number of bodies returned to Gaza for burial. The forensics team examining the remains said they showed signs of mistreatment.

As part of the deal, four bodies of hostages were handed over by Hamas on Tuesday, following four on Monday that were returned hours after the last 20 living hostages were released from Gaza. In all, Israel has been awaiting the return of the bodies of 28 hostages.

The Israeli military said forensic testing showed that “the fourth body handed over to Israel by Hamas does not match any of the hostages”. There was no immediate word on whose body it was.

In exchange for the release of the hostages, Israel freed around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees on Monday.

Unidentified bodies returned to Gaza show signs of abuse

Israel is expected to turn over more bodies, though officials have not said how many are in its custody or how many will be returned. It is unclear whether the remains belong to Palestinians who died in Israeli custody or were taken from Gaza by Israeli troops. Throughout the war, Israel’s military has exhumed bodies as part of its search for the remains of hostages.

As forensic teams examined the first remains returned, the Health Ministry on Wednesday released images of 32 unidentified bodies to help families recognise missing relatives.

Many appeared decomposed or burned. Some were missing limbs or teeth, while others were coated in sand and dust. Health officials have said Israeli restrictions on allowing DNA-testing equipment into Gaza have often forced morgues to rely on physical features and clothing for identification.

The forensics team that received the bodies said some arrived still shackled or bearing signs of physical abuse.

Sameh Hamad, a member of a commission tasked with receiving the bodies at Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital, said some arrived with their hands and legs cuffed.

“There are signs of torture and executions,” he told The Associated Press.

The bodies, he said, belonged to men aged 25 to 70. Most had bands on their necks, including one that had a rope around the neck.

Most of the bodies wore civilian clothing, but some were in uniforms, suggesting they were militants.

Hamad said the Red Cross provided names for only three of the dead, leaving many families uncertain of their relatives’ fate. The fighting has killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government in Gaza. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.

Thousands more are missing, according to the Red Cross and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

Rasmiya Qudeih, 52, waited outside Nasser Hospital, hoping her son would be among the 45 bodies transferred from Israel on Wednesday.

He vanished on October 7, 2023, the day of the Hamas-led attack that triggered the war. She was told he was killed by an Israeli strike.

“God willing, he will be with the bodies,” she said.

Netanyahu says Israel won’t compromise

The ceasefire plan introduced by US President Donald Trump had called for all hostages – living and dead – to be handed over by a deadline that expired on Monday. But under the deal, if that did not happen, Hamas was to share information about deceased hostages and try to hand them over as soon as possible.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel “will not compromise” and demanded that Hamas fulfil the requirements laid out in the ceasefire deal about the return of hostages’ bodies.

Trump, in an interview with CNN, warned that Israel could resume the war if he feels Hamas is not upholding its end of the agreement.

“Israel will return to those streets as soon as I say the word,” Trump said.

Hamas’ armed wing said in a statement on Wednesday that the group honoured the ceasefire’s terms and handed over the remains of the hostages it had access to.

Hamas and the Red Cross have said that recovering the remains was a challenge because of Gaza’s vast destruction, and Hamas has told mediators that some bodies are in areas controlled by Israeli troops.

This is not the first time Hamas has returned a wrong body to Israel. During a previous ceasefire, the group said it handed over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two sons — among those taken in Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 abducted.

Testing in February 2025 showed that one of the bodies returned was identified as a Palestinian woman. Bibas’ body was returned a day later.

More aid bound for Gaza

The World Food Programme said its trucks began arriving in Gaza after the entrance of humanitarian aid into Gaza was paused for two days due to the exchange on Monday and a Jewish holiday on Tuesday.

The timing of the scaled-up deliveries – which are part of the ceasefire deal – had been called into question after Israel said on Tuesday that it would cut the number of trucks allowed into Gaza, saying Hamas was too slow to return the hostages’ bodies.

Abeer Etefa, spokesperson for the World Food Programme, lauded the trucks’ passage but said the situation remained unpredictable.

“We are hopeful that access will improve in the coming days,” she said.

The Egyptian Red Crescent said 400 trucks carrying food, fuel and medical supplies were bound for Gaza on Wednesday.

The Israeli defence body overseeing humanitarian aid in Gaza, COGAT, declined to comment on the number of trucks expected to enter Gaza on Wednesday.

“Throughout this crisis, we have insisted that withholding aid from civilians is not a bargaining chip,” UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said in a statement.

Hamas said it had finished preparations for freeing its remaining living hostages, which Israel expects to take place early Monday (October 13, 2025), fulfilling a key step in Donald Trump’s Gaza plan hours before he hosts a peace summit in Egypt.

Under the U.S. president’s proposal, once the Palestinian militants have handed over the hostages, Israel is expected to begin releasing around 2,000 detainees in exchange.

But negotiators were still wrangling Sunday (October 12) over the final arrangements, with two Hamas sources telling AFP the group was insisting that Israel include seven senior Palestinian leaders on the list of those to be released.

Shosh Bedrosian, a spokeswoman for Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, said the hostage release “will begin early Monday (October 13) morning”, with Israel “expecting all 20 of our living hostages to be released together at one time”.

Mr. Trump is set to arrive in Israel shortly after the expected release and will address the Israeli parliament before heading to Egypt to host a meeting of world leaders to back his plan to end the two-year-old Gaza war and promote Middle East peace.

‘Completed all preparations’

“Palestinian prisoners will be released once Israel has confirmation that all of our hostages set to be released tomorrow are across the border into Israel,” Bedrosian said.

During a previous truce, the identification of deceased hostages was only confirmed after autopsies at Israel’s Abu Kabir Forensic Institute.

Two Hamas sources, meanwhile, told AFP the group was insisting Israel free seven prominent Palestinian figures as part of the exchange – at least one of whom Israel has previously rejected.

“Hamas insists that the final list include seven senior leaders, most notably Marwan Barghouti, Ahmad Saadat, Ibrahim Hamed, and Abbas Al-Sayyed,” one source said, a claim confirmed by the other. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.

The source said that the group and its allies had nevertheless “completed all preparations” for handing over to Israel all the living hostages held in Gaza.

Under the terms of the plan, Hamas is to release the remaining 47 hostages – living and dead – who were abducted on October 7, 2023, during the brutal cross-border Hamas assault that left 1,219 people dead, most of them civilians, and triggered Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza.

Hamas is also expected to hand over remains of a soldier killed in 2014 during a previous Gaza war.

Among the Palestinian prisoners to be released, 250 are security detainees, including many convicted of killing Israelis, while about 1,700 were arrested by the Israeli army in Gaza during the war.

After his Israel visit, Mr. Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will chair a summit of leaders from more than 20 countries in the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The Egyptian presidency said the meeting will aim “to end the war in the Gaza Strip, enhance efforts to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East, and usher in a new era of regional security”.

‘Fear and worry’

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he will attend, as has Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his counterparts from Italy and Spain, Giorgia Meloni and Pedro Sanchez, and French President Emmanuel Macron.

No Israeli nor Hamas officials will be present, officials from both camps confirmed.

The third day of the ceasefire saw some aid trucks cross into Gaza, but residents in Khan Yunis, in the south of the Strip, said some shipments were being ransacked by starving residents in chaotic scenes that saw food parcels trampled.

For Mahmud al-Muzain, a bystander, the scuffle showed that Gazans did not trust that the U.S.-led negotiations would lead to a long-term peace. “Everyone fears the war will return,” he told AFP. “We stockpile food out of fear and worry that the war will come back,” he said.

Since the ceasefire in the territory took hold, many displaced residents, like 38-year-old Fatima Salem, have been returning to devastated homes. “My eyes kept searching for landmarks I had lost – nothing looked the same, even the neighbours’ houses were gone,” she said.

“I missed the smell of my home, even if it’s now just rubble. We will pitch a tent next to it and wait for reconstruction,” she added.

‘A long-term truce’

Despite the apparent breakthrough in negotiations, mediators still have the tricky task of securing a longer-term political solution that will see Hamas hand over its weapons.

A Hamas source close to the group’s negotiating committee told AFP on Sunday (October 12) that it would not participate in post-war Gaza governance, but he pushed back on calls for Hamas to lay down its weapons.

“Hamas agrees to a long-term truce, and for its weapons not to be used at all during this period, except in the event of an Israeli attack on Gaza,” the source said.

Under the Mr. Trump plan, as Israel conducts a partial withdrawal from Gaza, it will be replaced by a multi-national force coordinated by a U.S.-led command centre in Israel.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least 67,806 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the United Nations considers credible.

The data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but indicates that more than half of the dead are women and children.

Published – October 12, 2025 09:57 pm IST

Palestinians fleeing from the southern Gaza city of Rafah during an Israeli ground and air offensive in the city.
| Photo Credit: AP

Hamas said on Thursday it had told mediators it would not take part in more negotiations during ongoing aggression but was ready for a “complete agreement” including an exchange of hostages and prisoners if Israel stopped the war.

Talks, mediated by among others Egypt and Qatar, to arrange a ceasefire between Israel and the Islamist movement in the Gaza war have repeatedly stalled with both sides blaming the other for the lack of progress.

Editorial | Punishing Hamas: On Israel and the ICJ ruling

The latest Hamas statement came as Israel pressed on with an offensive on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, despite an order by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the top U.N. court, to halt the attacks.

“Hamas and the Palestinian factions will not accept to be part of this policy by continuing (ceasefire) negotiations in light of the aggression, siege, starvation and genocide of our people”, the Hamas statement read.

“Today, we informed the mediators of our clear position that if the occupation stops its war and aggression against our people in Gaza, our readiness (is) to reach a complete agreement that includes a comprehensive exchange deal,” it added.

Israel has rejected past Hamas offers as insufficient and said it is determined to wipe out a group bent on its destruction. It says its Rafah offensive is focused on rescuing hostages and rooting out Hamas fighters.

Nearly 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive across all of Gaza, the health ministry there says. Israel launched the operation after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7 last year, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.