By Abdelraouf Arnaout
JERUSALEM (AA) – Israel has brought more than 350 bodies from the Gaza Strip since the war began on Oct. 7, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation confirmed on Friday.
“More than 350 bodies have been transferred from Gaza to Israel since the beginning of the war for examination by the Forensic Medicine Institute in Abu Kabir to verify whether they belong to hostages,” the national broadcaster claimed, without specifying locations or graves from which the Israeli army removed the bodies.
The Israeli army has yet to respond to the report.
“In the past, the Israeli army admitted that bodies were transferred from Gaza for examination as part of an attempt to find the bodies of the kidnapped Israeli,” the broadcaster said, claiming that “bodies that did not belong to the hostages were returned to Gaza.”
It quoted the army as saying about a month ago that its forces are “carrying out search and rescue operations in the Gaza Strip, including search for the bodies of the hostages.”
The army claimed that "the bodies are identified all while preserving their dignity.”
Israel says 136 Israelis are still being held in Gaza, including 31 believed to be dead.
Despite the International Court of Justice’s provisional ruling, Israel continues its onslaught on the Gaza Strip where at least 27,947 Palestinians have been killed, including 12,000 children and 8,190 women, and 67,459 injured since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.
The Israeli offensive has left 85% of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
* Writing by Ikram Kouachi