GAZA CITY, Palestine/ISTANBUL

Medical and field evidence accompanying the handover of Palestinian bodies indicates they were subjected to summary executions following torture, restraint, and being run over by military vehicles, the Prisoners’ Information Office affiliated with Hamas said on Friday.

Earlier in the day, 30 bodies of Palestinians released by Israel via the Red Cross arrived at Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, bringing the total number of bodies handed over since Oct. 14 to 225, according to the office.

“Traces of torture, handcuffing, burns, and crushing by military vehicles were found on their bodies,” the information office said in a statement.

“Keeping the bodies in refrigerators and burying them in the so-called ‘cemeteries of numbers’ reflects a deliberate policy to humiliate Palestinians, both alive and dead, and constitutes a blatant violation of international humanitarian law.”

The Palestinian bodies are received without identification, forcing families to recognize their relatives through remaining physical features or clothing, amid the lack of forensic testing capabilities due to the Israeli blockade and the destruction of laboratories in Gaza.

Before the Oct. 10 ceasefire, Israel held 735 Palestinian bodies in so-called “cemeteries of numbers,” according to the Palestinian National Campaign to Retrieve Martyrs’ Bodies and Discover the Fate of the Missing.

Besides, the campaign cited a Haaretz report published on July 16, 2024, revealing that the Israeli army has been holding about 1,500 bodies of Palestinians from Gaza at the notorious Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel.

Violations against prisoners

Separately, the office condemned far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir for publishing a video showing Palestinian prisoners handcuffed and lying on the ground, calling it “an open incitement that exposes the criminal mindset governing the occupation’s prisons.”

Earlier in the day, Ben-Gvir appeared in a Telegram video standing before a row of Palestinian detainees lying face down with their hands tied behind their backs, saying: “This is how we treat them, and all that’s left is to execute them.”

Ben-Gvir frequently appears in videos humiliating Palestinian prisoners and threatening them with death or execution, including Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti.

The office said these acts constitute “conclusive evidence of a systematic policy of killing targeting Palestinian prisoners.”

It called for the formation of an independent international investigation committee and for holding Israeli leaders accountable for crimes committed against living prisoners and those whose bodies remain detained.

The Gaza Health Ministry earlier 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.

The handover is part of the first phase of the truce. The next phases include handover of Gaza to a nonpolitical committee and rebuilding of the enclave destroyed in the two-year-long Israeli onslaught.