Gaza Herald – The National Campaign to Retrieve the Bodies of Victims said Israel is now withholding the bodies of 761 Palestinians, including 74 children, 89 prisoners, and 10 women, as part of the Israeli systematic and prolonged collective punishment policy
The campaign said the number rose on Thursday after Israeli forces killed two Palestinian teenagers, Mohammed Raslan Asmar (18) and Muhannad Tareq Azghir (17), in Hebron, and immediately seized their bodies. Their cases add to a growing list of Palestinians whose remains are kept from their families, both in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Israel has expanded this policy since 2015, using body withholding as a tool of coercion, pressure, and political bargaining in a grave violation of international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions, which explicitly prohibit withholding bodies or imposing punitive measures on families.
