The al Qassam hands over the bodies of 4 Israeli prisoners in central Gaza
The Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, handed over the bodies of 4 Israeli prisoners in the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
The bodies were handed over to the International Red Cross in the Bani Suhaila area of Khan Yunis Governorate, south of Gaza.
The bodies belong to the Bibas family (3 members) and the body of the prisoner Oded Lifshitz, and were handed over as part of the seventh batch of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement.
The Red Cross received the four bodies one by one, and put each one in a car, then its cars left heading to the site where the bodies were handed over to the Israeli army inside Gaza.
Channel 12 revealed on Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed out at the last minute from participating in the ceremony to receive the bodies of 4 prisoners as part of the seventh batch of the exchange process with Hamas.
Channel 12 added, “Prime Minister Netanyahu studied the possibility of participating in receiving the bodies on the Israeli side, and as part of the arrangements for participation, instructions were issued to field officials to prepare for Netanyahu’s arrival, but at the last minute it was decided that he would not attend”.
Hamas held the Israeli army responsible for the death of the 4 prisoners by bombing their detention place, while al Qassam fighters in the Gaza Strip treated them humanely and tried to rescue them.
This came in a press statement issued by Hamas before the start of the process of handing over the bodies of 4 Israeli prisoners, from the Bibas and Levshitz families, in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.
Hamas said in its statement, “We preserved the lives of the prisoners of the (Israeli) occupation, and provided them with what we could, and treated them humanely, but their army killed them along with their captors”.
The statement added, “The Qassam Brigades and the resistance did everything in their power to protect the prisoners and preserve their lives, but the occupation’s barbaric and continuous bombing prevented them from being able to rescue all the prisoners”.
The statement continued, “The Israeli enemy army killed its prisoners by bombing their detention centers, and the Nazi occupation government bears full responsibility after repeatedly obstructing the exchange agreement”.
