Gaza authorities refuse to accept ‘inhumane’ shipment of bodies, saying Israel must provide data about their identities.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health has refused to receive a container carrying the bodies of 88 Palestinians sent from Israel without prior coordination or information about their identities.
The procedures for receiving the container were suspended until Israel provides full data with the victims’ names, time of death and the location they were taken from, the ministry said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app on Wednesday.
This is “the minimum rights of these people and their families”, it said.
Gaza’s Government Media Office called the shipment of unidentifiable bodies an “inhumane and criminal move”, in a separate statement.
Reporting from central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said “the bodies are unidentifiable because they are mostly decomposed”.
“There are signs that those bodies have been in Israel for a long time,” he said.
“The Palestinian Health Ministry said that the Israeli military has deliberately concealed the identity of those Palestinian people. There is no information about their names, genders and the location they have been kidnapped from. The circumstances of their abduction from the Gaza Strip are also unclear,” he added.
Recent killings
The Palestinian Civil Defence said on Wednesday that at least 53 Palestinians have been killed across the Gaza Strip in Israeli attacks on their homes and shelters in the past 24 hours.
One person was killed overnight on Wednesday after a house was targeted in Beit Lahiya in the north of the enclave, and in the Nuseirat refugee camp, two Palestinians were killed when their tent was hit by an Israeli air strike.
Those killed in central Gaza’s Nuseirat were from the al-Ejla family who lost 11 relatives in August.
On Wednesday morning, one body was recovered from the Khirbet al-Adas area north of Rafah. The man found was 70-year-old Khalil Salim al-Nahl, the enclave’s civil defence said.
Earlier, our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic reported that a woman and her five children were killed in an Israeli bombing of a house in the town of Hay al-Nasr, northeast of Rafah.
At least three people were also killed in Gaza City’s Zinjo neighbourhood where the Jundi family home was bombed, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said there was a continuous surge in attacks across Gaza, mainly in the central area and the southern city of Khan Younis.
“The eastern area of Khan Younis, all the way to the coastal road, has been destroyed and there is nothing left there,” he said.
“In the past few hours, there have been attacks on the Nuseirat refugee camp, which has been relentlessly targeted by multiple air strikes. Entire families have been killed and are arriving at hospitals in pieces or soaked in blood,” he added.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday said that “nothing can justify” the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 or the “collective punishment of the Palestinian people” by Israel that followed as he called for an end to hostilities.
“The international community must mobilize for an immediate ceasefire, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, and the beginning of an irreversible process towards a two-state solution,” he wrote on social media platform X.
At least 41,495 people have been killed and 96,006 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza. In Israel, the number of those killed in the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 was at least 1,139, while more than 200 people were taken captive.
West Bank arrests
Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces on Wednesday raided Hebron, and arrested six residents, security sources told the Palestinian news agency Wafa. The military also arrested one man from Idhna, west of Hebron.
Six more Palestinians were arrested in the towns of Kafel Haris, Iskaka and Burqin in the Salfit governorate, Wafa reported.
Earlier, Israeli forces stormed the villages of Beit Furik and Salem to the east of the city of Nablus, as well as Asira ash-Shamaliya to the north of Nablus, and arrested five Palestinian men, the agency said.
Israeli forces have also arrested nine Palestinians from the Dheisheh refugee camp, south of Bethlehem, according to Wafa.