One Palestinian was killed in Gaza by Israeli firing and another was wounded yesterday, local medics and the Israeli military said, as a tenuous ceasefire between Hamas and Israel has largely held.
Gazan medical officials said the person who died was killed by Israeli firing east of Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Civil defence rescuers said one Palestinian was shot and wounded by Israeli gunfire in the western Khan Younis area in the southern part of the enclave.
The Israeli military said it fired after two fighters crossed the yellow line, an agreed-upon demarcation that Israeli troops have been withdrawn to, and approached soldiers operating in the northern Gaza Strip, ‘posing an imminent threat to them’.
The military said that in a separate incident in southern Gaza, a fighter crossed the yellow line and approached soldiers ‘in a manner that posed an immediate threat to them’.
The US-brokered Gaza truce, which left unresolved thorny issues like the disarmament of Hamas and a timeline for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, has been tested by periodic violence since it came into force on October 10.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 69,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, health officials in Gaza say.
Islamic Jihad handed over the body of a deceased hostage as part of the Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
The Israeli military said in a statement yesterday it had confirmed the body was that of Lior Rudaeff following an identification process.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that a coffin carrying the remains of a hostage had been handed over to Israeli security forces in Gaza via the Red Cross.
Islamic Jihad is an armed group that is allied with Hamas and also took hostages during the October 7, 2023, attack that precipitated the Gaza war. It said the hostage’s body was located in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
Under the October ceasefire deal, Hamas turned over all 20 living hostages still held in Gaza since the group’s attack on Israel, in return for nearly 2,000 Palestinian convicts and wartime detainees held in Israel.
The ceasefire agreement also included the return of remains of 28 deceased hostages in exchange for the remains of 360 fighters.
Including Rudaeff, taken from the Kibbutz Nir Yitzchak, 23 hostage bodies have been returned in exchange for 300 bodies of Palestinians, though not all have been identified, according to Gaza’s health authorities.
The tenuous ceasefire has calmed most but not all fighting, allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to the ruins of their homes in Gaza.
Israel has withdrawn troops from positions in cities and more aid has been allowed in.
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