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Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Saturday that it had received the remains of 15 more Palestinians from Israel via the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) under a ceasefire deal, Anadolu Agency reports.

A ministry statement said that the new transfer brought the number of Palestinian bodies returned by Israel to 330 since the ceasefire took effect on Oct. 10.

Forensic teams have so far identified 97 bodies and are continuing examinations “in accordance with approved medical procedures and protocols” before the remains are documented and released to families, the ministry said.

Palestinian authorities said that many of the bodies handed over by Israel showed signs of abuse, including beatings, bound hands, blindfolds, and facial disfigurement, and were returned without names.

READ: UN agency calls for entry of shelter supplies into Gaza amid harsh weather conditions

Families have been trying to identify the remains of their relatives by physical markings or clothing, as forensic facilities in Gaza remain out of service due to a years-long Israeli blockade and the destruction of laboratories.

Before the ceasefire, Israel held 735 Palestinian bodies in so-called “cemeteries of numbers,” according to the Palestinian National Campaign to Retrieve Martyrs’ Bodies.

The Israeli daily Haaretz also reported that the army has been holding about 1,500 bodies of Palestinians from Gaza at the notorious Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel.

Israel has killed nearly 69,200 people and injured over 170,700, mostly women and children, in a brutal offensive in Gaza since October 2023 and reduced the enclave to rubble.

READ: UN: Israel rejects 23 Gaza aid requests, leaving millions of shelter items stuck

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.