News / Palestine

Israel returns bodies of 80 unidentified Palestinians

Monday, 05 August 2024 4:58 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 05 August 2024 4:58 PM ]

An aerial view shows mourners watching as the bodies of dozens of Palestinians slauhgtered by the Israeli regime are tended to during a mass funeral in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on March 7, 2024. (File photo by AFP)

The Israelis have returned the bodies of 80 unidentified Palestinians slaughtered by the Tel Aviv forces during the regime's genocidal war in the Gaza Strip.

"We received 80 bodies inside 15 bags, with more than four martyrs in each bag, each wrapped in a single shroud", Yamen Abu Suleiman, the director of the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza told AFP on Monday.

Abu Suleiman said Israeli authorities did not provide any information about the bodies, including their names or where they were found or taken from.

"We do not know if they are martyrs (killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip) or detainees who had been tortured and killed in (Israeli) jails", he said, adding that the bodies will be screened and examined in an attempt to identify them and determine the causes of death.

Palestinians released from Israeli jails recount horrible ordeal

Israel has released some Palestinians from several jails who were taken away in the wake of the aggression against Gaza early October.

AFP journalists on the scene saw men in hazmat suits inspecting the corpses wrapped in blue plastic sheeting, before unloading them from the shipping container they had arrived in.

The bodies were then laid in a line for burial in a mass grave dug in the sand at a cemetery near Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, with scores of Palestinians watching from the side.

“The occupation provided us with no information about the names, or ages, or anything. This is a war crime, a crime against humanity,” Abu Suleiman noted.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli regime forces on the return of the slaughtered bodies. In the past, the Israelis used to return the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli jails.

Nearly 40,000 Palestinian people have been killed in Gaza since the Israelis launched the genocidal war on Gaza in early October.

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