The body of a Palestinian woman who Hamas had handed over to Israel instead of the deceased hostage Shiri Bibas is back in the Gaza Strip.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Thursday it transferred the remains from Israel to Gaza in the overnight hours.
Palestinian authorities confirmed that Red Cross representatives had handed over the body.
The identity of the woman from Gaza remains unclear.
A week ago, Hamas handed over four bodies to the Red Cross as part of an ongoing hostage-prisoner swap deal with Israel. The militant group said all of them were Israeli hostages.
However, a forensic examination revealed that the body in one of the coffins was not that of Bibas, but that of a Palestinian woman.
Hamas later admitted that a mistake might have been made. The switch – whether intentional or accidental – sparked outrage in Israel.
A day later, Hamas finally handed over the proper body. Bibas and her two young sons, who were also abducted by militants on October 7, 2023, were buried in Israel on Wednesday.
After a forensic investigation, the Israeli army announced that the children had been brutally murdered by their captors in November 2023. Shiri was also murdered while in hostage captivity, according to a spokesperson at her home, Kibbutz Nir Oz.
According to Hamas, however, the three Bibas family members were killed in an Israeli airstrike.
