Israel receives remains of Gaza hostage - PM office

Israel said its security forces in Gaza had received from the Red Cross the remains of a hostage returned by Hamas as part of a US-brokered ceasefire deal.

The terms of the truce, in effect since 10 October, require the return of all hostages living and dead.

"Israel has received, via the Red Cross, the coffin of a fallen hostage that was handed over to an IDF and Shin Bet force inside the Gaza Strip," a statement from Israel's Prime Minister's office said.

In a later statement, the military said the body had been brought into Israel and was being transferred to a forensic medical centre for identification.

Earlier, Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said it would hand over the remains of another hostage in accordance with the ceasefire terms.

The group said the body had been recovered in "the Shujaiya neighbourhood east of Gaza City during ongoing search and excavation operations inside the yellow line," referring to the boundary marking Israeli military positions within Gaza.

If the identity is confirmed, this would be the 21st dead hostage handed over by Hamas since the ceasefire took effect.

At the start of the truce, Hamas held 48 hostages in Gaza - 20 alive and 28 deceased.

The militants have since released all surviving captives.

Of the 20 deceased hostages to have previously been repatriated 18 were Israelis, one was a Thai national and another one Nepali.

In a separate statement, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the militant group was working on "completing the process of handing over the bodies of the Israeli captives despite the difficulties and obstacles".

"We are working to complete the entire exchange process as soon as possible," he added.

Israel has accused Hamas of dragging its feet in returning the bodies of deceased hostages, while the Palestinian group says the process is slow because many are buried beneath Gaza's rubble.

The group has repeatedly called on mediators and the Red Cross to provide it with the necessary equipment and personnel to recover the bodies.

Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages in their cross-border attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's retaliatory offensive in Gaza killed over 68,000 Palestinians, health officials in the enclave say.

The US-brokered ceasefire has broadly held through repeated incidents of violence.

Palestinian health authorities say Israeli forces have killed 239 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.

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, 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.

UN says food parcels delivered to one million Gazans

The United Nations said it had distributed food parcels to one million people in Gaza since the ceasefire, but warned it was still in a race to save lives.

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) stressed all crossing points into Gaza should be opened to flood the famine-hit Palestinian territory with aid, adding that no reason was given why the northern crossings with Israel remained closed.

"Three and a half weeks into the ceasefire in Gaza, we have distributed food parcels to around one million people across the Gaza Strip," said the WFP's Middle East spokeswoman Abeer Etefa.

"That's part of the broad operation to push back hunger in Gaza," she told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Cairo.

WFP aims to reach 1.6 million people in the territory with parcels, which provide enough food for a family for 10 days.

However, to get operations running at the level required, "we really need more access, more border crossings to be opened and more access to key roads inside Gaza," said Ms Etefa.

The US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect on 10 October. Ms Etefa described how the WFP was scaling up operations in Gaza and opened 44 of the 145 food distribution points it hopes to run.

An estimated 700,000 people are now receiving fresh bread daily, supplied through 17 WFP-supported bakeries: nine in south and central Gaza, and eight in the north. The agency is hoping to get 25 up and running.

Ms Etefa said while food consumption levels had increased slightly thanks to the humanitarian aid and commercial trucks now allowed to enter, they remained well below pre-conflict levels.

Furthermore, at this stage, households are still eating mostly cereals and pulses, with meat, eggs, vegetables and fruit being consumed "extremely rarely".

Nour Hammad, WFP's spokeswoman in Gaza, said commercial food prices were still beyond the reach of most families, saying an apple now costs as much as a kilogramme of apples did before the war broke out in October 2023.

The WFP said it had only been able to bring in roughly half of what was required to meet the food needs of people in Gaza.

"The needs are overwhelming," said Ms Etefa, adding: "We are in a race to save lives."

She said WFP trucks were still only coming through the Kerem Shalom and Kissufim crossings, severely limiting the amount of aid that can enter Gaza, and posing a major obstacle to getting aid to the north.

"We actually haven't been given clear answers on why the northern crossing points are still closed," she said.