JERUSALEM — Hamas handed over to Israel the remains of one more hostage on Friday night, after insisting it was committed to returning all the dead captives still unaccounted for under Gaza’s ruins after two years of war.

“Israel received, via the Red Cross, the coffin of a deceased hostage who was returned” to its security forces in Gaza and would be identified at a medical analysis centre in Israel, the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

Under a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas spearheaded by US President Donald Trump, the Palestinian militant group returned all 20 surviving hostages and the remains of nine out of 28 known deceased ones, not counting the remains handed over Friday night.

In exchange, Israel freed nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners from its jails and halted the military campaign it launched in Gaza after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.

Bodies under Gaza rubble 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday reaffirmed his determination to “secure the return of all hostages”, and his defence minister has warned that the military will restart the war if Hamas fails to do so.

Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad on Friday called those threats “unacceptable pressure tactics”.