DOHA, October 26. /TASS/. Hamas is going to hand over to Israel bodies of all the deceased hostages it would be able to found in the Gaza Strip, Political Bureau member of the Palestinian movement Musa Abou Marzook said.
"All the provisions of the [ceasefire] agreement pertain to general issues, which are required to be clarified, and negotiations are to be held," he said on the air with Al Jazeera Mubasher, answering the question whether the timeline exists for Hamas to transfer the remains to Israel.
"As regards the bodies of hostages, we committed to transfer all the bodies we have and the ones we will find," Abou Marzook said. Hamas "does not want to retain the bodies" and hopes "to solve the problem as quickly as possible," he stressed.
"The United States keeps an eye on performance of the ceasefire agreement and we expect fairness and neutrality from them," the Hamas official added.
As the newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported on October 17, citing Hamas sources, Palestinian radicals would need to conduct a "large-scale search operation" to locate the remaining bodies of the hostages in Gaza. According to the publication's sources, the search process is complicated by the fact that Hamas supporters who knew where the remains had been buried were killed in fighting. Furthermore, some areas of the enclave where the bodies were believed to be buried were completely destroyed by the Israeli military, making access extremely difficult.