Hamas vows to return bodies of Gaza tunnel martyrs

Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, on Sunday described Israel’s holding of Palestinian martyrs’ bodies as a “desperate attempt to impose new rules on the Palestinian resistance movements”.

Hamas’s spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in a statement that the Palestinian resistance will spare no means to fight the occupation and defend the Palestinian people.

Hebrew media sources reported on Sunday that the Israeli army is holding the bodies of five Islamic Jihad martyrs who were killed in the army’s bombing of a resistance tunnel east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

Barhoum stressed that the resistance that was able to liberate “its heroes” from the Israeli jails in the Wafa al-Ahrar deal is also capable of recovering the bodies of these martyrs.

Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, has announced earlier that the bodies of five of its militants are still missing after five days of continuous search operations.

The Israeli army has rejected repeated requests by the Red Cross organization to allow rescue teams to search for the bodies beyond the borderline between Gaza and the 1948 occupied Palestine.