Israel returns more bodies to Gaza after hostage identified – DW – 10/18/2025

Gaza’s Civil Defense Agency has said that Israeli forces killed nine members of a single Palestinian family when they shelled the bus the family was traveling in on Friday.

The Israeli military confirmed it had targeted the vehicle, saying it had crossed the so-called “yellow line” to which Israeli troops have withdrawn in Gaza as per the current ceasefire agreement.

“Troops fired warning shots toward the suspicious vehicle, but the vehicle continued to approach the troops in a way that caused an imminent threat to them. The troops opened fire to remove the threat, in accordance with the agreement,” a statement from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said.

Speaking in Egypt on Saturday, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Gaza Civil Defense Agency, Mahmud Bassal, said Israeli forces fired “two tank shells at the vehicle.”

Bassal told France’s AFP news agency, “Our teams recovered the bodies of nine martyrs — including four children and two women — after Israeli occupation forces directly targeted the vehicle they were traveling in within the Zeitun neighborhood.”

Bassal said the bodies of two children were still missing because their “remains were scattered due to the intensity of the bombardment.”

A Cameroon-flagged tanker traveling from Oman to Djibouti was “hit by an unknown projectile, resulting with a fire,” UK military forces reported Saturday.

Authorities are investigating the incident, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center (UKMTO) said.

Early reports suggest the crew is preparing to abandon ship, which is currently about 210 kilometers (130 miles) east of the Yemeni city of Aden.

Search and rescue operations are under way.

Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have targeted ships in the region again of late.

But the group has not claimed responsibility for this latest attack.

The official Saba news agency, which is run by the Houthis, said a military source had denied that the rebels were involved in the incident.

 “The Yemeni armed forces had nothing to do with that incident,” the unnamed source said, according to the agency. 

A US pressure group named United Against Nuclear Iran suggested that the ship in question is likely the Falcon, a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tanker identified as belonging to Iran’s fleet of so-called shadow ships used to skirt international sanctions.

Israel’s military says it is aware of the situation but denied having carried out any operations in the area.

Yemeni Houthis have attacked ships they say are tied to Israel in an effort to force the Jewish state to stop its war against Hamas, upending Red Sea trade.

The Palestinian embassy in Egypt announced Saturday that Gaza’s Rafah border crossing would reopen on Monday.

The Palestinian embassy said people wanting to return to Gaza from Egypt would be able to enter at Rafah.

“The number of people registering to return to Gaza is very big,” an embassy employee said without citing a specific figure. 

Israel closed the Rafah crossing in May 2024 after taking control of it.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s office on Saturday rejected the Palestinian claim, saying that the crossing would remain closed until further notice.

“The crossing’s opening will be considered based on the manner in which Hamas fulfills its part in returning the deceased hostages and implementing the agreed-upon framework,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

The Israeli prime minister’s office said Saturday that the body of Israeli hostage Eliyahu Margalit has been identified after testing by the National Center for Forensic Medicine. 

“IDF representatives informed the family of the hostage Eliyahu Margalit, of blessed memory, that their loved one had been returned to Israel and his identification had been completed,” Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on X. 
    
Hamas handed over Margalit’s body late on Friday. The 76-year-old was abducted from the horse stables where he worked in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas terror attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

Under the terms of the peace agreement put forth by US President Donald Trump, Israel must turn over the bodies of 15 Palestinians for every deceased Israeli hostage that is returned by Hamas.

Margalit’s is the 10th body returned since the ceasefire went into effect a week ago. 

Hamas and its affiliates have been under pressure to find and return the corpses of dead hostages. Trump has threatened to green-light Israel’s resumption of the war if it doesn’t return all 28 dead hostages.

The Gaza Health Ministry said that some of the bodies that Israel returned on Saturday bore signs of “abuse, beatings, handcuffing and blindfolding.” 

The Israeli military has dismissed those claims as “Hamas’s false propaganda.”

Israel has returned the bodies of 15 Palestinian prisoners after a deceased hostage Israeli authorities received last night from Hamas was idenfitied.

The continued exchange of bodies, as stipulated in a US-led ceasefire agreement, comes as the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry says the death toll in the enclave has surpassed 68,000 amid the search for bodies under the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Strip.

To date, the bodies of 10 Israeli hostages have been returned by Hamas since the ceasefire went into effect last week.

Israelis are set to gather in Tel Aviv on Saturday night for a large rally celebrating the return of deceased hostages.

Meanwhile, a ship in the Gulf of Aden has been struck, the UK has said.

Stay tuned to DW for all of the latest from the Middle East.