TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that body parts returned by Hamas overnight were the partial remains of a hostage previously recovered in Gaza by Israeli troops almost two years ago, an announcement that threatened to rattle the tenuous, U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement.
Netanyahu called the return a “clear violation” of the ceasefire agreement, which requires Hamas to return all Israeli hostage remains as soon as possible.
As Netanyahu weighed a possible response, Israeli media said options could include halting the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza, expanding Israeli control of Gaza or carrying out airstrikes targeting Hamas leaders.
In a sign of the fragility of the ceasefire, Israeli troops were shot at in the southern city of Rafah on Tuesday and returned fire, according to an Israeli military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because there hasn’t been an official announcement yet.
There are still 13 bodies of hostages in Gaza. Hamas said Tuesday it has recovered the body of a hostage that it plans to hand over this evening.
An Associated Press videographer in Khan Younis witnessed what appeared to be a white body bag being carried out from a tunnel by several men, including some masked militants, and then transported into an ambulance. It was not immediately clear what was in the bag.
The slow return of hostages’ bodies is posing a challenge to implementing the next stages of the ceasefire, which will address even knottier issues, such as the disarmament of Hamas, the deployment of an international security force in Gaza and deciding who will govern the territory.
Hamas has said it is struggling to locate the bodies amid the vast destruction in Gaza, while Israel has accused the militant group of purposely delaying their return. Over the weekend, Egypt deployed a team of experts and heavy equipment to help search for the bodies of the remaining hostages. That work continued Tuesday in Khan Younis and Nuseirat.
This is the second time since the ceasefire began on Oct. 10 that remains turned over by Hamas have been problematic. Israel said one of the bodies Hamas released in the first week of the ceasefire belonged to an unidentified Palestinian.
During a previous ceasefire in February 2025, Hamas said it handed over the bodies of three hostages, Shiri Bibas and her two sons, but testing showed that one of the bodies returned was identified as a Palestinian woman. Shiri Bibas’ body was returned a day later.
A stricken family
The remains returned overnight have been identified as belonging to Ofir Tzarfati, Netanyahu’s office said.
Tzarfati was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel that started the war. Almost 400 people were killed at the festival alone and dozens were abducted. In all, the militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages that day.
Tzarfati was killed in captivity and his body was retrieved by Israeli troops in November 2023. In March 2024, his family received additional remains for burial.
Tzarfati’s family said in a statement that this is the third time “we have been forced to open Ofir’s grave and rebury our son.”
“Since then, we have lived with a wound that constantly reopens, between memory and longing, between bereavement and mission,” it added and described the return of body parts as an “abhorrent manipulation.”
Israel kills 3 Palestinians in a West Bank raid
Earlier Tuesday, Israeli authorities said they had killed three Palestinian militants early during an operation in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, the latest action in Israel’s stepped-up military activity in the territory since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack.
Israeli police said the three men were shot as they came out of a cave near Jenin, a town in the northern West Bank known as a militant stronghold. The Israeli military said in a statement that the militants “took part in terror activity in Jenin,” but gave no further details.
Two militants were shot and killed in the initial volley of gunfire. The third, who was wounded, was killed shortly after, according to the Israeli military.
An earlier statement said the Israeli military carried out an airstrike shortly afterward to destroy the cave. The army confirmed an airstrike in the area but gave no further details.
Hamas condemned the Jenin strike and later identified two of the three men as militants with Hamas’ Qassam Brigades. The third man was referred to as a “comrade,” but no additional details about him were given.
Israel says its operations have cracked down on militants in the West Bank. But Palestinians and human rights groups say scores of uninvolved civilians have also been among the dead, while tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes.
Palestinians buried in Gaza
In exchange for the returned dead hostages, Israel has so far handed back to Gaza 195 Palestinian bodies, fewer than half of which have been identified.
On Monday, 41 unidentified bodies were buried in the Gaza city of Deir al-Balah and a funeral was held in Israel for the slain hostage Yossi Sharabi, whose remains were returned earlier this month.
The last 20 living hostages were returned to Israel when the ceasefire began, and in exchange, Israel freed roughly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Most of those freed were seized in Gaza by Israeli troops during the two-year war and have been held without charge. Also among those released were 250 Palestinians sentenced to prison terms, most of them convicted for deadly attacks on Israelis dating back decades, according to Israel’s Justice Ministry.
Over 68,500 Palestinians have died in the two-year war in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. Israel has disputed them without providing its own toll.
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Associated Press writers Josef Federman and Renata Brito in Jerusalem and Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
By MELANIE LIDMAN
Associated Press
