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JERUSALEM: The remains of three people handed over by Hamas to the Red Cross this week do not belong to any of the hostages, an Israeli military official said Saturday, the latest development that could undermine the US-brokered agreement for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
The handover followed Israel’s return on Friday of the bodies of 30 Palestinians to Gaza. That completed an exchange after militants earlier this week turned over remains of two hostages, a sign that the tense Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement was edging forward.
The unidentified remains of the three people were returned late Friday to Israel, where they were being examined overnight. At the time, another Israeli military official warned that Israeli intelligence suggested they did not belong to any of the hostages taken by Palestinian militants during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war.
The second Israeli military official confirmed on Saturday they were not of any hostages. It was unclear who they might be and why they were returned to Israel.
Both officials spoke to The Associated Press of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
A Hamas spokesman did not immediately answer calls and messages seeking a comment.
Since the US brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect on Oct. 10, Palestinian militants have released the remains of 17 hostages that were held in Gaza for the past two years.
But the process of returning the bodies of the last 11 remaining hostages, as called for under the truce deal, is progressing slowly, with militants releasing just one or two bodies every few days.
The total number of Palestinian bodies returned by Israel since the ceasefire began now stands at 225. Only 75 of those have been identified by families, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It is unclear if those returned were killed in Israel during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, whether they died in Israeli custody as detainees or were recovered from Gaza by troops during the war.
The fragile truce faced its biggest challenge earlier this week when Israel carried out strikes across Gaza that killed more than 100 people, following the killing of an Israeli soldier in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, and the incomplete return of hostages.

DUBAI: The foreign ministers of Germany, Jordan and the United Kingdom jointly called on Saturday for an immediate ceasefire in the war in Sudan, describing the situation there in stark, apocalyptic terms after a paramilitary force seized the last major city in the East African nation’s Darfur region.
United Nations officials have warned that fighters with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have rampaged through the Darfur city of El-Fasher, reportedly killing more than 450 people in a hospital and carrying out ethnically targeted killings of civilians and sexual assaults. While the RSF have denied killing people at the hospital, those who have escaped El-Fasher, satellite images and videos circulating social media provide glimpses of what appears to be mass slaughter taking place in the city.
At the Manama Dialogue security summit in Bahrain, British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on Saturday spoke in grim words about events in El-Fasher, where a paramilitary force known as the Rapid Support Forces has seized the city.
“Just as a combination of leadership and international cooperation has made progress in Gaza, it is currently badly failing to deal with the humanitarian crisis and the devastating conflict in Sudan, because the reports from Darfur in recent days have truly horrifying atrocities,” Cooper said.
“Mass executions, starvation and the devastating use of rape as a weapon of war, with women and children bearing the brunt of the largest humanitarian crisis in the 21st century. For too long, this terrible conflict has been neglected, while suffering has simply increased.”
She added that “no amount of aid can resolve a crisis of this magnitude until the guns fall silent.”
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul echoed Cooper’s concern, directly calling out the RSF for its violence in El-Fasher.
“Sudan is in absolutely an apocalyptic situation,” Wadephul said.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Sudan has not received “the attention it deserves. A humanitarian crisis of inhumane proportions has taken place there.”
“We’ve got to stop that,” he added.
Bahrain’s government late on Wednesday rescinded an accreditation for The Associated Press to cover the summit, after a “post-approval review” of that permission. The government did not elaborate on why the visa was revoked. Earlier that day, the AP published a story on long-detained activist Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja beginning an “open-ended” hunger strike in Bahrain over his internationally criticized imprisonment.
Al-Khawaja halted his hunger strike late on Friday after receiving letters from the European Union and Denmark regarding his case, his daughter Maryam Al-Khawaja said.