Israel says Lior Rudaeff’s body returned from Gaza

The Israeli military says it has identified a body delivered from Gaza as that of Israeli-Argentine Lior Rudaeff.

The 61-year-old man died while trying to defend Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak during the Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023 and his body was taken to Gaza by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) armed group, the army said.

PIJ said the body was found on Friday in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

Hamas has already returned the 20 live hostages and 23 of the 28 dead hostages as part of the first phase of a ceasefire agreement that began on October 10. Four of the five dead hostages still in Gaza are Israeli and one is Thai.

Israel has criticized Hamas for not yet returning all the bodies. Hamas says it is difficult to find them under the rubble.

PIJ is an armed group allied to Hamas. He participated in the October 7 attack and previously held some Israeli hostages.

The Hostage and Missing Families Forum, a campaign group, celebrated the return.

“Lior’s return provides some comfort to a family that has lived with agonizing uncertainty and doubt for more than two years,” he said in a statement. “We will not rest until the last hostage returns home.”

During the first phase of the US-brokered ceasefire agreement, Israel released 250 Palestinian prisoners in its jails and 1,718 Gaza detainees.

Israel has also handed over the bodies of 285 Palestinians in exchange for the bodies of the 19 Israeli hostages returned by Hamas, along with those of three foreign hostages, one of them Thai, a Nepalese and a Tanzanian.

The sides also agreed to increased aid to the Gaza Strip, a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces and a cessation of fighting, although violence has broken out as both sides accused each other of violating the deal.

Israel launched airstrikes after accusing Hamas fighters of killing two of its soldiers on October 19 and killing another soldier on October 28. Hamas said it was not aware of any clashes in the area of ​​the first incident and had no connection to the second attack.

Israeli military actions have killed at least 241 people since the start of the ceasefire, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the October 7, 2023, attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and took another 251 hostage. All but one of the dead hostages still in Gaza were kidnapped in the attack.

Since then, at least 68,875 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza, the Health Ministry reported.