JERUSALEM: The Red Cross transferred the remains of a hostage to Israeli troops in Gaza, the prime minister’s office said Friday, hours after hundreds of mourners flocked to the funeral of a soldier whose body was turned over this week by Palestinian militants.
Before Friday’s handover, Hamas had returned the bodies of 22 hostages since the start of the current ceasefire. If the remains in the latest handover over are confirmed to be those of an additional hostage that would leave five others still in Gaza.
The ceasefire, which began Oct. 10, is aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and the Palestinian militant group.
As part of the ceasefire, Israel has released the bodies of 285 Palestinians the Red Cross and the Gaza’s Health Ministry said. Only 84 of them have been identified. DNA labs are not allowed in Gaza, according to the ministry, which makes the identification more difficult.
Israeli-American soldier is buried
Hundreds of mourners attended the military funeral of an Israeli-American soldier whose body was recently returned to the country as part of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
Capt. Omer Neutra was 21 when Hamas militants killed him and abducted his body to Gaza in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack that began the war. His remains was released to Israel on Sunday night along with those of two other soldiers killed during the attack.
“Since that day, the old world stopped, turned upside down. We became broken, clinging to your memory, your smile, your voice,” said his father, Ronen Neutra. “Today we finally have a place to be with you, a place to talk to you, a place to love you, even when you’re no longer here. ”
Neutra was also eulogized by Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command, and Israel’s President Isaac Herzog.
“He is the son of two nations. He embodied the best of both the United States and Israel. Uniquely, he has firmly cemented his place in history as the hero of two countries,” said Cooper.
Orna Neutra spoke last and addressed her son’s coffin. “My beloved,” she said, her voice quivering, her eyes shaded by dark sunglasses. “We are all left with the vast space between who you were to us and to the world in your life and what you were yet to become. And with the mission to fill that gap with the light and goodness that you are.”
Omer Neutra was born and raised on Long Island, New York, and moved to Israel to enlist in the military as a volunteer.
After he was abducted, his parents made some 40 trips to Washington to lobby for their son, appeared regularly at protests in the US and Israel and addressed the Republican National Convention last year. For more than a year following the Oct. 7 attack, they believed Omer was still alive. After 14 months, they received word from the military that intelligence indicated he had been killed during the 2023 attack.
Three Palestinian teenagers killed in West Bank
Meanwhile in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials say Israeli troops have shot, killed, and confiscated the bodies of three Palestinian teenagers since Wednesday. No soldiers were injured in the exchanges, the military said.
Two were killed Thursday night north of Jerusalem, said the military, claiming the teens had been throwing explosives toward a major highway.
In a statement on social media, the military released grainy and undated footage showing the apparent ambush. In the video, one of two figures standing near a wall appears to hurl something over it. Quickly, what appear to be bullets begin to pelt the ground, sending the two scrambling. One falls down.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the teenagers as Muhammad Atem and Muhammad Qasem, both 16 years old, and said Israel was holding their bodies.
On Wednesday, forces shot, killed and confiscated the body of Murad Abu Seifen, 15, near the West Bank city of Jenin Wednesday. The military said, without providing evidence, that troops had shot him after he threw an explosive at them.
Defense for Children International-Palestine, a local rights organization that investigates and documents violence against Palestinian children, said Abu Seifen’s family heard from Palestinian officials early Thursday that he had been killed. DCIP said it had no information about the number of bullet wounds on Abu Seifen’s body and had no idea where the body was.
The organization says Israeli forces have withheld the bodies of at least 54 Palestinian children since June 2016. Six of the bodies have since been released to their families, while 48 Palestinian children’s bodies remain withheld.
Upswing in West Bank violence
The shootings are the latest in a surge of military killings of Palestinian children in the West Bank that has accompanied a general upswing in violence in the territory since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
The UN’s humanitarian office said Thursday that 42 Palestinian children under the age of 18 had been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the start of 2025. Some were killed during Israeli military raids in dense neighborhoods, others by sniper fire in peaceful areas.
The killings have risen as the Israeli military has stepped up operations in the occupied West Bank since the war’s onset.
Settler violence has also surged recently with the olive harvest season, as Palestinian farmers face threats from violent Israeli settlers roaming the groves.
The UN’s humanitarian office said Thursday that in October it documented the highest monthly number of Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank since the office began keeping track in 2006. There were over 260 attacks, or an average of eight incidents per day, the office said.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for a future independent state.
