About 80 unidentified Palestinian bodies were buried in a mass grave in the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip.
Sources in the Hamas-run Ministry of Health told Agence France-Presse that they were transferred “from morgues and cemeteries” to Israel so that the authorities could ensure that there were no hostages among them.
They were later returned via the Kerem Shalom crossing in the southern Gaza Strip.
An IDF spokesman later confirmed that the bodies had been transferred to Israel to verify whether any of them were hostages.
Israel says 129 out of 240 people are still missing after they were kidnapped and taken to Gaza on October 7. The attacks that occurred that day, led by Hamas, resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people.
More than 20,600 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombing since then, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
