Hamas says body of Israeli soldier found in Gaza

The armed wing of Hamas said on Tuesday it had found the body of an Israeli soldier who had been held captive in Gaza.

Hamas said the body was found in Shujaiya, an eastern suburb of Gaza City in an area still occupied by Israeli forces, after Israel granted access to the location for teams from Hamas and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades "will hand over the body of one of the occupation's prisoners, which was found in the Shujaiya neighbourhood east of Gaza City at 8:00 pm Gaza time (1800 GMT)," the group said on its Telegram channel.

Under a ceasefire deal that took effect on 10 October, Hamas turned over all 20 living captives held in Gaza in return for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and wartime detainees held in Israel.

Hamas also promised to turn over the remains of deceased captives but says Gaza's war devastation has made locating bodies difficult. Israel accuses Hamas of stalling.

Before Tuesday, Hamas had returned 20 of the 28 bodies of captives that had been buried beneath the rubble. In return, Israel handed over 270 bodies of Palestinians it had killed since the war erupted in October 2023, Gaza health authorities said.

Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages in their cross-border attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's retaliatory offensive in the Gaza Strip killed over 68,000 Palestinians, health officials in the enclave say.

The US-brokered ceasefire has been threatened on almost a daily basis amid continuous Israeli attacks in Gaza.

Palestinian health authorities say Israeli forces have killed 240 people in strikes since the truce took effect, nearly half of them in a single day last week when Israel retaliated for a militant attack on its troops. Six hundred others have reportedly been wounded.

Israel says three of its soldiers have been killed and it has targeted scores of militants it says have approached lines behind which Israeli troops have withdrawn under the truce.

Earlier on Tuesday, Gaza health authorities said Israeli fire killed a man in Jabalia in northern Gaza. Israel's military said it killed a "terrorist" who crossed into areas the army continues to occupy and posed an imminent threat.

(Reuters and TNA staff)