Israel holds bodies of 450 Palestinians: NGO

By Qais Abu Samra

RAMALLAH, Palestine (AA) – Israel holds the bodies of 450 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, according to a local nongovernmental organization on Tuesday.

Among the withheld bodies are 18 belonging to Palestinian detainees, who died inside Israeli jails, the National Campaign for Retrieval of Bodies of Palestinians said in a statement.

The victims “include the bodies of 21 minors, five women and 52 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip,” the statement said.

“Israel withheld 101 bodies of Palestinians in 2023, the largest to have been recorded in a year,” it added.

The NGO said the figure does not include the bodies of Palestinians held by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip due to the lack of precise data.

Israel has launched air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Palestinian resistance group Hamas on Oct. 7.

At least 22,185 Palestinians have since been killed and 57,035 others injured, according to Gaza’s health authorities, while nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.

The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure damaged or destroyed, and nearly 2 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicines.

*Writing by Mohammad Sio