Israel holds bodies of 5 Gaza militants after tunnel blast

JERUSALEM: Israel’s army said Sunday it is holding the bodies of five Palestinian militants found after it blew up a tunnel last week stretching from the Gaza Strip into its territory.

Israeli media said they would most likely be retained as bargaining chips to retrieve the bodies of soldiers believed to be held by the strip’s Hamas rulers.

The military stressed that the Palestinian bodies were found in Israeli territory following the operation to blow up the tunnel that left at least 12 militants dead.

It did not say what conditions it would place on their return.

“We are indeed in possession of those bodies of five terrorists,” military spokesman Jonathan Conricus told AFP.

“All were killed or died inside Israeli territory, not in the Gaza Strip.” Israel blew up the tunnel on Oct 30 after monitoring it for some time, saying it had no choice but to act after ‘the grave and unacceptable violation of Israeli sovereignty’. Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, has used such tunnels to carry out attacks in the past.

Two of the 12 dead belonged to the military wing of Hamas, with the other 10 from Islamic Jihad, which said Friday that the bodies of five of them remained trapped in the tunnel.

Israeli public radio’s veteran military affairs reporter, Carmela Menashe, said Sunday evening that the bodies held by the army ‘are indeed the missing which Islamic Jihad spoke of and wanted returned’.

“Israel is determined not to return them until it gets some kind of information on the missing Israelis,” she said.

The remains of two Israeli soldiers killed in the 2014 Gaza war are thought to still be in the coastal territory.

Three Israeli civilians, all said to be mentally unstable, are also believed to have entered Gaza and to be held by Hamas. Islamic Jihad said Sunday it would take no part in any exchange deal.

“We will not accept the occupation blackmailing us and using the issue to obtain information about the Israeli prisoners,” a spokesman said.

Hamas spokesman Fawzy Barhoum said in a statement that in taking the bodies Israel was strengthening the Islamic group’s will to fight. — AFP