Israel claims one body returned was not of female Israeli captive 

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Hamas of committing a “cruel and evil” violation of the Gaza ceasefire deal as he claimed that one of the bodies returned on Thursday was not of the female captive Shiri Bibas.

The Israeli army said the remains of two child captives were identified but another body released by Hamas was not the boys’ mother or any other captive.

The remains of Ariel and Kfir Bibas were identified by the National Institute of Forensic Medicine and Israel Police afterwards, but the army said early on Friday that the third body was not that of their mother Shiri Bibas or any other captive.

In a statement later on Friday, Hamas said there might have been “the possibility of an error or overlap in the bodies, which may have resulted from the occupation targeting and bombing the place where the family was with other Palestinians”.

“We have received the occupation’s allegations and claims from the mediator brothers, and we will examine these claims with complete seriousness, and we will announce the results clearly,” the statement added.

Hamas handed over the bodies of four people who were taken captive during its October 2023 attack on southern Israel, under the ceasefire agreement that has paused more than 15 months of war.

The fourth body was that of Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 when he was taken captive.

Netanyahu issued a threat to Hamas, saying: “We will act with determination to bring Shiri home along with all our hostages – both living and dead – and ensure Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement.”

The Palestinian group has maintained that the deceased captives handed over on Thursday were killed in an Israeli air attack during the war, but Israel says they were killed by Hamas in November 2023.

The director of the Gaza Government Media office later tweeted that her remains appear to have been mixed with other human remains from the rubble after an Israeli air strike hit the place she was held in.

“There is no weight for the anger of the war criminal Netanyahu regarding the body of Mother Bibas, which was turned into pieces after it was apparently mixed with other bodies under the rubble of a place that was intentionally and deliberately bombed by the occupation [Israeli] warplanes,” Ismail al-Thawabta said on X.

“Netanyahu himself is the one who issued orders for the direct and merciless bombing, and he is the one who bears full responsibility for killing her and her children with horrific brutality.”

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman in Jordan, said the Bibas family was not captured by Hamas but by a smaller, lesser-known group.

Meanwhile, the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, confirmed that six Israeli captives will be freed on Saturday in exchange for Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons.

There has been “tremendous public anger whipped up inside Israel” over the controversy of the bodies, according to Mohamad Bazzi, an associate professor at New York University.

He told Al Jazeera that the Israeli right wing had seized on the moment to press for a return to war.

But it would be “quite something” for Netanyahu to restart fighting and jeopardise further releases of captives by abandoning the ceasefire deal now, Bazzi said.