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Hamas handed over three coffins it claimed contained the bodies of dead Gazan hostages, according to the Israeli military.
Israel received the coffins through the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip and transported them to Israel for official identification.
If confirmed as deceased hostages, it would mean eight Israeli and foreign deceased hostages remain in Gaza.
Under the first phase of a US-brokered ceasefire deal with Israel that began last month, Hamas agreed to return 20 live and 28 dead hostages it was holding.
Israel accused Hamas of being too slow to return the dead hostages, while Hamas said it was working to retrieve bodies trapped under rubble in the territory.
Hamas’s armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said the remains were found earlier Sunday “along the route of one of the tunnels in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official X account later said: “All the families of the hostages have been updated accordingly and our hearts go out to them at this difficult hour. Efforts to return our hostages continue and will not stop until the last hostage is returned.”
Hamas and Israel accuse each other of violating the truce.
On Sunday, an Israeli airstrike killed a man in northern Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Israel’s army said it struck an insurgent who posed a threat to its soldiers.
Under the first phase of the ceasefire, all living Israeli hostages were released on 13 October in exchange for 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,718 Gazan detainees.
Israel handed over the bodies of 225 Palestinians in exchange for the bodies of the 15 Israeli hostages returned by Hamas so far, along with those of two foreign hostages, one Thai and the other Nepali.
Before Sunday, nine of the 11 dead hostages still in Gaza were Israeli, one was Tanzanian and one was Thai.
All but one of the dead hostages, still in Gaza, were among 251 people abducted during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 others were killed.
Israel responded by launching a military campaign in Gaza that killed more than 68,500 people, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
