TUNIS, October 14. /TASS/. The return of the remains of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip by Hamas and affiliated groups is a complicated process that will take time, Christian Cardon, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said.
Al Jazeera quoted him as saying that returning the bodies of the dead is "harder than freeing the living." "This is a huge problem," he noted, emphasizing that resolving it "may take days or weeks." He also did not exclude the possibility that some bodies might not be found.
On the evening of October 13, four coffins containing the remains of hostages killed in Gaza were handed over to the Israeli side through ICRC representatives. Earlier that morning, all 20 still-held hostages in Gaza were released and returned to Israel, leaving the militants with 28 bodies. All of them are to be returned in the near future as part of the peace settlement agreements in Gaza.
The Israeli government expressed dissatisfaction that, during the first stage of returning the remains, the militants handed over only four bodies out of 28. Defense Minister Israel Katz called this a violation of the agreement and warned that further delays by the militants would have repercussions.