Gaza ceasefire concerns as Hamas returns ‘all bodies it can access’

Al Jazeera’s correspondent Hani Mahmoud was near the location in Gaza City of the handover to the Red Cross of the remains of Israeli captives. Reporting from outside a warehouse in Gaza City where the handover between Hamas and the Red Cross took place behind closed doors, Mahmoud explained the difficulty in recovering the remains of people killed in Israel’s bombardment of the Palestinian territory. “Just to highlight how difficult it is: Gaza has been reduced to rubble, so the search and digging out of bodies from under the rubble is an immense challenge not only for the Israeli captives but the thousands of Palestinians missing and trapped under the rubble of these buildings in Gaza City,” Mahmoud said. According to reports, Hamas returned four bodies confirmed as dead captives on Monday and another four bodies late on Tuesday, though Israeli authorities said one of those bodies was not that of a known captive. The Israeli military then said it received two more coffins from the Red Cross at a meeting point in the northern Gaza Strip late on Wednesday night, and the bodies have been taken for forensic identification. A Palestinian fighter wearing the uniform of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, stands guard as Red Cross vehicles enter a warehouse to collect coffins containing the bodies of deceased captives, in Gaza City, on October 14, 2025 [Yousef al-Zanoun/AP Photo]