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Israel has retrieved the body of a hostage after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he expected the remains of a soldier killed in 2014 to be returned. The body is being taken for official identification, the Israeli military said.
Earlier, Netanyahu said Israel would receive the body of Hadar Goldin, a soldier killed in an ambush by Hamas during a previous conflict in 2014 and whose body has been held in Gaza since then. Hamas' armed wing also confirmed on Sunday that it would hand over Hadar Goldin's body.
If the body is confirmed to be that of Lieutenant Goldin, Hamas will have returned all 20 living hostages and 24 of the 28 dead hostages under the first phase of a ceasefire agreement. Netanyahu said Lieutenant Goldin's family would now be able to give him a Jewish burial and reiterated his intention to bring back the bodies of all deceased hostages.
"So far we have returned 250. We will return them all ," he said.
On Saturday, Lieutenant Goldin's family said an entire nation is waiting for Hadar to be returned to us.
"We are awaiting official confirmation that Hadar has returned to Israel. We do not give up on anyone in this country, ever. We ask everyone to remain calm. Until it is final, it is not over ," the family said in a statement.
Lieutenant Goldin, from Kfar Saba, is the only deceased hostage whose remains were held in Gaza before the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which triggered the recent war.
He was killed in action on August 1, 2014, not long after a ceasefire began in that year's war between Israel and Hamas. He was among a group of Israeli soldiers patrolling an agricultural area near Rafah in southern Gaza when they were attacked by a group of Hamas fighters.
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