Identity of fourth body baffles Israel; probe finds soldier Nimrodi killed in airstrike

Investigations continue in Israel into the identity of the fourth body that the Al-Qassam Brigades handed over to the Red Cross late last night, amid suggestions that it may not belong to an Israeli abductee as was previously believed, but could be one of Hamas’s members.

The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation said: “An investigation is underway into the possibility that the unidentified fourth body is not an Israeli abductee.”

Channel 12 quoted security sources as saying the fourth body “appears to belong to one of the Hamas operatives who took part in the operation to capture the abductees”, bolstering the hypothesis that an Israeli airstrike may have killed everyone at the site, including Israeli soldier Tamir Nimrodi.

In the same context, the Forum of Families of Israeli Abductees said medical examinations showed that soldier Tamir Nimrodi, who had been believed to have been killed during his abduction, was alive at the moment an Israeli airstrike targeted the site where he was being held — that is, he died as a result of the Israeli aerial strike on his place of captivity.