THE Red Cross received a body today that Hamas said was of an Israeli soldier killed in 2014 and whose remains have been held in Gaza for the past 11 years. 

His body was the only one held in the Palestinian territory since before the latest fighting between Israel and Hamas.

The resistance group said it had found the body of the soldier, Hadar Goldin, on Saturday in a tunnel in the enclave’s southernmost city of Rafah. 

Mr Goldin was killed on August 1 2014, two hours after a ceasefire took effect to end that year’s war between Israel and Hamas.

The remains will be transferred to Israel and to the national forensic institute for identification. If the body is identified as Mr Goldin’s, there will be four bodies of hostages remaining in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Gaza health officials announced that the official Palestinian death toll in the coastal enclave has now exceeded 69,000, despite the current “ceasefire.”

The Health Ministry said the number of people killed in Gaza since Israel began its military onslaught on the Strip has risen to 69,169. The ministry’s detailed records are viewed as generally reliable by independent experts.

It added that 284 people had been added to the total after their identities were verified between October 31 and last Friday.

The latest jump in deaths occurred as more bodies are being recovered in the devastated Gaza Strip since the ceasefire began on October 10 and as other bodies are identified. 

The toll also includes Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes carried out since the truce agreement took effect. 

Israel returned the remains of another 15 Palestinians to Gaza on Saturday, according to hospital officials there, a day after the Palestinian resistance group returned the remains of another hostage to Israel. 

He was identified as Lior Rudaeff, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said that Mr Rudaeff was born in Argentina.

The exchanges are the central part of the ceasefire’s initial phase, which requires that Hamas return all hostage remains as quickly as possible. 

For each Israeli hostage returned, the Tel Aviv authorities have been releasing the remains of 15 Palestinians. Ahmed Dheir, director of forensic medicine at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, said that the remains of 300 had now been returned, with 89 identified.

“We do not have sufficient resources or the DNA to match them with the martyrs’ families,” he added.