Israel’s defence minister has said the country could resume fighting if Hamas does not honour the terms of the ceasefire deal
Israel’s defence minister has said the country could resume fighting if Hamas does not honour the terms of the ceasefire deal
Hamas has announced that the remains of all the deceased Israeli hostages that it can reach have been handed back and it would need specialist recovery equipment to retrieve the rest from Gaza’s ruins, amid threats from Israel to resume fighting if the terms of ceasefire are not honoured.
Two further bodies were handed over late on Wednesday, after Hamas had already returned the remains of seven of 28 known deceased hostages – along with an eighth body which Israel said was not that of a former hostage.
Soon after, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement on social media that the group had “fulfilled its commitment to the agreement by handing over all living Israeli prisoners in its custody, as well as the corpses it could access … as for the remaining corpses, it requires extensive efforts and special equipment for their retrieval and extraction.”
Since Monday, under a ceasefire agreement brokered by US president Donald Trump, Hamas has handed back 20 surviving hostages to Israel in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners freed from Israeli jails.
Israel’s defence minister threatened on Wednesday to resume fighting if Hamas does not honour the continuing terms of the deal.
“If Hamas refuses to comply with the agreement, Israel, in coordination with the United States, will resume fighting and act to achieve a total defeat of Hamas, to change the reality in Gaza and achieve all the objectives of the war,” a statement from Israel Katz’s office said.
Seeking to keep the pressure on Hamas, Trump said he would consider allowing Israeli forces to resume fighting in Gaza if Hamas fails to uphold its end of the ceasefire deal that he brokered.
