Israel has received the body of Lt Hadar Goldin, a soldier killed in an ambush by Hamas in 2014 and whose body has been held in Gaza since then.
The Israeli military said Lt Goldin, who was 23 when he died, was formally identified and will now be buried. He left behind parents, a sister, two brothers, and a fiancée.
Hamas’s armed wing had said on Sunday that it would hand over Lt Goldin’s body as part of a ceasefire deal.
Hamas has now returned all 20 living hostages and 24 out of 28 deceased hostages under the first phase of the deal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said earlier on Sunday that Lt Goldin’s family would now be able to give him a Jewish burial and reiterated his intention to bring back the bodies of all deceased hostages.
“We have returned 250 so far. We will bring them all back,” he said.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it expressed “deep condolences to the family and continues to make every effort to return all the deceased hostages and is prepared for the continued implementation of the agreement”.
It said efforts to retrieve Lt Goldin “involved extensive intelligence efforts, alongside operational activities on the ground” over the past decade and during the two-year-long war between Israel and Hamas.
On Saturday, Lt Goldin’s family said, “an entire nation is waiting for Hadar to be returned to us”.
Lt Goldin, from Kfar Saba, is the only deceased hostage whose remains were being held in Gaza before the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the latest war.
He was killed in combat on 1 August 2014, not long after the start of a ceasefire in that year’s war between Israel and Hamas. He was among a group of Israeli soldiers patrolling an agricultural area near Rafah in southern Gaza when they were attacked by a group of Hamas fighters.
The Israeli military determined that Lt Goldin was killed along with two other soldiers in a firefight, and that his body was then dragged into an underground tunnel by the Hamas fighters.
The Israeli military unleashed massive firepower to try to prevent Hamas from taking Lt Goldin hostage. Scores of Palestinian civilians were killed in the bombardment of Rafah, which continued for four days, including after Lt Goldin was declared dead.
On Saturday, two Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in Gaza. The Israeli military said two people had crossed the yellow line marking the line of Israeli control and posed an “immediate threat”.
Separately, one Palestinian was shot dead in Gaza by Israeli fire and another was wounded on Saturday, local medics and the Israeli military said.
Gazan medical officials said the person who died was killed by Israeli fire east of Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Civil defence rescuers said the injured Palestinian was wounded by Israeli gunfire in Khan Younis.
Israeli military actions have killed at least 241 people since the start of the ceasefire, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are seen by the UN as reliable.
The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and took 251 others hostage.
At least 69,176 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, the health ministry reported.
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