TEL AVIV, November 17. /TASS/. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported that the body of a 19-year-old female soldier who had been held hostage by the Palestinian radical movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip since October 7 was found in a building adjacent to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.

"The body of IDF soldier Corporal Noa Marciano, who was abducted by the Hamas terrorist organization, was extracted by IDF troops from a structure adjacent to the Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip and was transferred to Israeli territory," the IDF wrote on its Telegram channel. "Yesterday (Thursday), IDF representatives informed her family that her body was extracted and returned to Israeli territory," the Israeli army added.

The IDF confirmed the death of Marciano on November 14. On Thursday, the Israeli military said it had found the body of another woman, Yehudit Weiss, abducted on October 7, in a building adjacent to Al-Shifa, the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital.

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 200 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ aggressive actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel declared a total siege of Gaza and started carrying out strikes on the Palestinian enclave, as well as on certain areas in Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are also taking place in the West Bank.