Hamas Hands Over Coffins To Red Cross, Israel Accuses Group of Faking Hostage Recovery

According to the Israeli military, Hamas has delivered to Red Cross in Gaza two coffins allegedly filled with the bodies of hostages. They will be handed over to Israeli forces, and they will be identified in the National institute of forensic medicine in Israel.

The armed wing of Hamas earlier declared that it had retrieved the body of Israeli hostages Amiram Cooper and Sahar Baruch.

On Tuesday, Israel alleged that Hamas breached the Gaza ceasefire agreement by delivering a coffin with human remains which did not belong to any of the 13 dead Israeli and other foreign hostages who remained in Gaza. Israeli government reported that forensic analysis indicated that they belonged to Ofir Tzarfati who was a hostage whose body was being retrieved by Israeli forces in Gaza in late 2023.

The Israeli armed forces, also provided footage shot by a drone which depicted Hamas members taking the body bag with the debris of a building in Gaza City, reburying it, and then faking the discovery in front of Red Cross employees.

The Red Cross claimed that its workers could not know that the body bag had been shifted prior to their arrival and that the simulation recovery was unacceptable.

Israel Says Hamas Violated Gaza Ceasefire After Fake Hostage Return Video Surfaces

Hamas denied the so-called unfounded charges and claimed that Israel was planning to create artificial reasons to move on to further aggressive actions.

The Israeli government would later accuse Hamas of another violation of the ceasefire arrangement hours later claiming that the group fighters had murdered an Israeli soldier during an assault in a section of southern Gaza.

Hamas denied its role in the event at the Rafah region but the prime minister of Israel directed an air attack tsunami in Gaza on Tuesday night as retaliation. Israeli military claimed it had attacked dozens of terror targets and terrorists.

According to a Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, 104 Palestinians were killed, 46 of them children and 20 of them women, becoming the deadliest day since the ceasefire was declared on 10 October.

US President Donald Trump insisted that nothing would compromise the ceasefire accord that his administration had assembled together with Qatar and Egypt and Turkey but he went on to say that Israel must retaliate when its troops were attacked. 

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