Israel has confirmed the identities of two deceased hostages that it received from Hamas via the Red Cross in Gaza.
The bodies were identified as those of Amiram Cooper and Sahar Baruch, the Israeli prime minister’s office said on Thursday. Hamas had earlier said it recovered their bodies.
“The Government of Israel shares in the deep sorrow of the Cooper and Sahar families and all the families of the fallen hostages,” it said in a statement.
On Tuesday, the Israeli government accused Hamas of violating the Gaza ceasefire deal after the group handed over a coffin containing human remains that did not belong to one of the 13 deceased Israeli and foreign hostages still in Gaza.
It said forensic tests showed they belonged to Ofir Tzarfati, a hostage whose body had been recovered by Israeli forces in Gaza in late 2023.
The Israeli military also released footage filmed by a drone that showed Hamas members removing a body bag containing the remains from a building in Gaza City, reburying it, and then staging the discovery in front of Red Cross staff.
The Red Cross said its staff were unaware that the body bag had been moved before their arrival and that the staged recovery was “unacceptable”.
Hamas rejected what it called the “baseless allegations” and accused Israel of “seeking to fabricate false pretexts in preparation for taking new aggressive steps”.
Hours later, the Israeli government accused Hamas of another ceasefire violation, saying the group’s fighters had killed an Israeli soldier in an attack in an area of southern Gaza.
Hamas claimed it was not involved in the incident in the Rafah area, but Israel’s prime minister ordered a wave of air strikes across Gaza on Tuesday night in response. The Israeli military said it attacked “dozens of terror targets and terrorists”.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 104 Palestinians were killed, including 46 children and 20 women, making it the deadliest day since the ceasefire took effect on 10 October.
US President Donald Trump maintained “nothing” would jeopardise the ceasefire agreement, which his administration brokered along with Qatar, Egypt and Turkey, but he added that Israel should “hit back” when its soldiers were targeted.
Under the deal, Hamas agreed to return the 20 living and 28 dead hostages it was holding within 72 hours.
All the living Israeli hostages were released on 13 October in exchange for 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,718 detainees from Gaza.
Israel has also handed over the bodies of 195 Palestinians in exchange for the bodies of the 13 Israeli hostages so far returned by Hamas, along with those of two foreign hostages – one of them Thai and the other Nepalese.
Eleven of the 13 dead hostages still in Gaza are Israelis, one is Tanzanian, and one is Thai.
All but one of the dead hostages still in Gaza were among the 251 people abducted during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, during which about 1,200 other people were killed.
Israel responded by launching a military campaign in Gaza, in which more than 68,600 people have been killed, including more than 200 since the ceasefire took effect, according to the territory’s health ministry.
