CAIRO: Israel on Tuesday received a body from Hamas via the Red Cross in Gaza, the Prime Minister’s Office said, after the Palestinian group reported it had found the remains of an Israeli hostage to be handed over. The office confirmed the body was that of Staff Sergeant Itay Chen following an identification process.
Hamas said it had found the body of a hostage who had been held by Palestinian militants in Shejaia, an eastern suburb of Gaza City in an area still occupied by Israeli forces, after Israel granted access to the location for teams from Hamas and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Under a ceasefire deal that took effect on October 10, Hamas turned over all 20 living hostages held in Gaza in return for nearly 2,000 Palestinian convicts and wartime detainees held in Israel. Hamas also promised to turn over the remains of deceased hostages but says Gaza’s war devastation has made locating bodies difficult. Israel accuses Hamas of stalling.
Including Chen, Hamas has returned 21 of the 28 bodies of hostages that were buried in Gaza. In return, Israel handed over 270 bodies of Palestinians it had killed since the war began in October 2023, Gaza health authorities said.
Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages in their cross-border attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s retaliatory offensive in the Gaza Strip killed over 68,000 Palestinians, health officials in the enclave say.
Chen was serving as a soldier when Hamas carried out the surprise rampage through southern Israeli towns and military bases.
The US-brokered ceasefire has broadly held through repeated incidents of violence. Palestinian health authorities say Israeli forces have killed 239 people in strikes since the truce took effect, nearly half of them in a single day last week when Israel retaliated for a militant attack on its troops.
Israel says three of its soldiers have been killed and it has targeted scores of militants it says have approached lines behind which Israeli troops have withdrawn under the truce.
Earlier on Tuesday, Gaza health authorities said Israeli fire killed a man in Jabalia in northern Gaza. Israel’s military said it killed a “terrorist” who crossed into areas the army continues to occupy and posed an imminent threat.
Israel receives the body of another deceased buried by Hamas in Gaza
https://arab.news/jy8m5
Israel receives the body of another deceased buried by Hamas in Gaza
- Israel returned 270 Palestinian bodies
- Hamas hands over the body of another hostage
Three brothers arrested over US embassy blast in Oslo
- The brothers, who were Norwegian citizens of Iraqi origin, had been arrested in Oslo and police were investigating the motive
- While none of the brother were previously known to police, Hatlo said investigators were not ruling out links to “criminal networks“
OSLO: Norwegian police said Wednesday three brothers had been arrested on suspicion of a “terrorist bombing” over a weekend explosion at the US embassy in Oslo, which caused minor damage but no injuries.
Police prosecutor Christian Hatlo told a press conference the brothers, who were Norwegian citizens of Iraqi origin, had been arrested in Oslo and that police were investigating the motive.
“We are still working from several hypotheses. One of them is whether this is an order from a government entity,” Hatlo said.
“This is quite natural given the target — the US embassy — and the security situation the world is in today,” he said.
Hatlo said the investigation would seek to clarify exactly what roles the brothers, who were in their 20s, had played.
“We believe that one of them is the person who placed the bomb outside the embassy and that the other two were complicit in the act,” Hatlo told reporters.
Oystein Storrvik, a lawyer for one of the suspects, told broadcaster TV 2 that his client had admitted “to being involved in the case.”
“He admits that he placed the bomb there,” Storrvik told the broadcaster.
Storrvik added that his client had been questioned by police.
“He has explained what happened, and I have no further comments at this time,” he said.
- ‘Proxy actors’ -
While none of the brother were previously known to police, Hatlo said investigators were not ruling out links to “criminal networks.”
In its annual threat assessment, Norwegian security service PST said last month that Iran, which it considers one of the main threats to the country, could rely on “proxy actors,” including “criminal networks,” to commit acts.
On Tuesday, Iran’s ambassador in Oslo denied any involvement by his country in the embassy explosion.
“It is unacceptable that we are being singled out,” Alireza Jahangiri told Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang.
According to police, the perpetrators of the bombing, described as “powerful,” may also have acted out of their own motives.
US embassies have been placed on high alert in the Middle East due to American strikes on Iran. Several have faced attacks as Tehran responds by targeting industrial and diplomatic facilities.
The blast took place at around 1:00 am (0000 GMT) on Sunday at the entrance to the embassy’s consular section.
On Monday, two images were released from surveillance camera footage showing a suspect dressed in dark clothing with a hood over his head and wearing a backpack.
Roughly at the time the incident occurred, a video had been uploaded to the Google Maps page for the US embassy.
The video, which has since been taken down, appeared to show Iran’s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the US-Israeli strikes in Iran.
According to Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, the person who uploaded the video wrote in Persian: “God is great. We are victorious.”
Police have also opened an investigation into this.
