CAIRO: The Gaza health ministry has refused to receive the bodies of 88 Palestinians sent by the Zionist entity without prior coordination and without details about their identities. The bodies were brought into Gaza on Wednesday in a container loaded on a truck through a Zionist-controlled crossing, but, according to Palestinian officials, there was no information provided about the names or ages of the victims or locations where they died.

Health officials at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis refused to receive them and bury them, urging the International Committee of the Red Cross ICRC to seek details from the Zionist entity. “The health ministry halted the procedures to receive the container (carrying the bodies) until the completion of the full data and information about those bodies so their relatives can identify them,” the ministry said in a statement.

According to Al-Jazeera, the bodies are unidentifiable because they are “mostly decomposed”. “There are signs that those bodies have been in (Zionist entity) for a long time,” said Al-Jazeera reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum from Deir El-Balah. “The Palestinian Health Ministry said that the (Zionist) military has deliberately concealed the identity of those Palestinian people. There is no information about their names, genders and the location they have been kidnapped from. The circumstances of their abduction from the Gaza Strip are also unclear,” he added. The head of the Gaza government media office told Reuters that health ministry officials told the driver of the truck to bring the bodies of dead Palestinians back to the Zionist crossing from which he had arrived. The truck then left the hospital. “They must act according to the international humanitarian law and in a way that preserves the dignity of the martyrs and their families,” Ismail Al-Thawabta told Reuters. The Red Cross said it wasn’t involved in the transfer process. “We reiterate that all families have the right to receive news about their loved ones and bury them respectfully and in line with their traditions,” said a statement issued by the ICRC.

Under International Humanitarian Law, those who have died during an armed conflict must be handled with dignity and be properly managed. The law requires that they be searched for, collected and evacuated, which helps ensure that people do not go missing, the ICRC statement added. The Civil Emergency Service tasked with finding people missing under rubble, on roads and in ruined buildings in Gaza says it has been notified of around 10,000 people missing during the near year-long Zionist assault on Gaza. — Agencies

Gaza health authorities list more than 41,000 Palestinians confirmed killed in the assault, which the Zionist entity launched after Hamas fighters attacked Zionist towns on October 7 last year, killing 1,200 people and capturing around 250 hostages. In recent days the conflict has spread to another major theater, with the entity launching the biggest airstrikes on Lebanon in nearly two decades, targeting the Hezbollah movement, which has been rocketing the entity in solidarity with the Palestinians. — Agencies