Israel on Saturday returned the bodies of 15 Palestinians to Gaza, hospital officials in the strip said, a day after militants returned the remains of a hostage to Israel under the terms of the ceasefire agreement in the two-year war.
The exchange marked another step forward for the tenuous, U.S.-brokered truce. As part of the deal, Israel has returned the remains of 15 Palestinians for each Israeli hostage.
The Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis said the 15 bodies were brought there.
The return came shortly after Israel confirmed the remains given back Friday night were of an Israeli man who died while fighting Hamas in the militants' Oct. 7, 2023 attack that started the war. The hostage body was identified as that of Lior Rudaeff, according to a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 's office.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said Rudaeff was born in Argentina and and moved to Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, a farming community in southern Israel, as a child. He volunteered for more than 40 years as an ambulance driver and was a member of the community’s emergency response team.
The forum said he was killed in the Hamas-led attack and that his body was taken to Gaza.
Since the ceasefire took effect on Oct. 10, Palestinian militants have released the remains of 23 hostages, including Rudaeff's body, with five still remaining in Gaza.
Including the remains returned on Saturday, Israel has handed over the bodies of 300 Palestinians. Health officials in Gaza have struggled to identify the bodies without access to DNA kits, and have so far identified 89 of the bodies, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
Under the terms of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire, Israel is supposed to allow substantially more aid into Gaza.
However, relief efforts under the pact still fall well short of what is needed in Gaza, according to Farhan Haqq, deputy spokesperson for the United Nations. More than 200,000 metric tons in aid is positioned to move into Gaza, but only 37,000 tons, mostly food, have been admitted, he said.
The 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage. Israel's sweeping military offensive has killed more than 68,800 Palestinians in Gaza, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals, maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by independent experts.
Israeli-American soldier is buried
Hundreds of mourners attended the military funeral of an Israeli-American soldier whose body was returned to the country Sunday night.
Capt. Omer Neutra was 21 when Hamas militants killed him and abducted his body to Gaza in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack that began the war.
“Since that day, the old world stopped, turned upside down. We became broken, clinging to your memory, your smile, your voice,” said his father, Ronen Neutra. “Today we finally have a place to be with you, a place to talk to you, a place to love you, even when you’re no longer here. ”
Neutra was also eulogized by Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command, and Israel’s President Isaac Herzog.
“He is the son of two nations. He embodied the best of both the United States and Israel. Uniquely, he has firmly cemented his place in history as the hero of two countries,” said Cooper.
Orna Neutra spoke last and addressed her son’s coffin. “My beloved,” she said, her voice quivering, her eyes shaded by dark sunglasses. “We are all left with the vast space between who you were to us and to the world in your life and what you were yet to become. And with the mission to fill that gap with the light and goodness that you are.”
Omer Neutra was born and raised on Long Island, New York, and moved to Israel to enlist in the military as a volunteer.
After he was abducted, his parents made some 40 trips to Washington to lobby for their son, appeared regularly at protests in the U.S. and Israel and addressed the Republican National Convention last year. For more than a year following the Oct. 7 attack, they believed Omer was still alive. After 14 months, they received word from the military that intelligence indicated he had been killed during the 2023 attack.
Turkey seeks arrest of Israeli officials
Prosecutors in Turkey issued arrest warrants Friday for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and 36 other Israeli officials on charges of carrying out “genocide” in Gaza.
The warrants also seek the arrest of Defense Minister Israel Katz, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, Chief of General Staff Eyal Zamir, and Navy Commander David Saar Salama, according to a statement from the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office.
The move is highly symbolic since the Israeli officials are unlikely to enter Turkey. The prosecutor’s office accuses the officials of crimes against humanity, citing a military offensive that has killed thousands of civilians in Gaza.
The charges were brought following complaints filed by activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla, who were arrested by Israeli forces last month after trying to break through the blockade of Gaza.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar dismissed the warrants, calling Turkey’s judiciary a political tool of its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“Israel firmly rejects, with contempt, the latest PR stunt by the tyrant Erdoğan,” Saar said in a post on X.
Three Palestinian teenagers killed in West Bank
Meanwhile in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials say Israeli troops have shot, killed, and confiscated the bodies of three Palestinian teenagers since Wednesday. No soldiers were injured in the exchanges, the military said.
Two were killed Thursday night north of Jerusalem, said the military, claiming the teens had been throwing explosives toward a major highway.
In a statement on social media, the military released grainy and undated footage showing the apparent ambush. In the video, one of two figures standing near a wall appears to hurl something over it. Quickly, what appear to be bullets begin to pelt the ground, sending the two scrambling. One falls down.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the teenagers as Muhammad Atem and Muhammad Qasem, both 16 years old, and said Israel was holding their bodies.
On Wednesday, forces shot, killed and confiscated the body of Murad Abu Seifen, 15, near the West Bank city of Jenin Wednesday. The military said, without providing evidence, that troops had shot him after he threw an explosive at them.
Defense for Children International-Palestine, a local rights organization that investigates and documents violence against Palestinian children, said Abu Seifen’s family heard from Palestinian officials early Thursday that he had been killed. DCIP said it had no information about the number of bullet wounds on Abu Seifen’s body and had no idea where the body was.
The organization says Israeli forces have withheld the bodies of at least 54 Palestinian children since June 2016. Six of the bodies have since been released to their families, while 48 Palestinian children’s bodies remain withheld.
Upswing in West Bank violence
The shootings are the latest in a surge of military killings of Palestinian children in the West Bank that has accompanied a general upswing in violence in the territory since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
The U.N.’s humanitarian office said Thursday that 42 Palestinian children under the age of 18 had been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the start of 2025. Some were killed during Israeli military raids in dense neighborhoods, others by sniper fire in peaceful areas.
The killings have risen as the Israeli military has stepped up operations in the occupied West Bank since the war’s onset.
Settler violence has also surged recently with the olive harvest season, as Palestinian farmers face threats from violent Israeli settlers roaming the groves.
The U.N.’s humanitarian office said Thursday that in October it documented the highest monthly number of Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank since the office began keeping track in 2006. There were over 260 attacks, or an average of eight incidents per day, the office said.
