The Israeli army said the remains of a hostage had been handed over to the Red Cross in Gaza, after Hamas said it would return the body as part of a ceasefire deal.
"According to information provided by the Red Cross, a coffin of a deceased hostage has been transferred into its custody and is on the way to IDF (army) troops in the Gaza Strip," the military said in a statement.
Israel says it has received nine of 28 bodies held in Gaza, and Hamas, citing technical problems, said it needed heavy machinery and excavating equipment to speed up the process of locating bodies buried under rubble.
Israel, insisting Hamas knows the whereabouts of the hostages' bodies, had said the group was running out of time.
Hamas has said it remains committed to the ceasefire agreement and to handing over the bodies of all remaining hostages.
In a statement earlier, Hamas' armed wing said a new body had been recovered and would be released at 11pm local time (9pm Irish time).
The issue has cast a shadow over the ceasefire agreement - the first phase of US President Donald Trump's 20-point plan to end the war.
Earlier, Hamas called on mediators to push for the next steps under the ceasefire, including reopening the border, letting in aid, beginning reconstruction, setting up an administration and completing Israel's withdrawal.
Fighting has largely stopped in Gaza under Mr Trump's plan, endorsed by mediators Egypt, Qatar and Turkey.
The 20 living hostages taken with others in an 7 October, 2023, Hamas assault on Israel, were returned from Gaza earlier this week.
Israel said yesterday it was preparing for the reopening of Gaza's Rafah crossing with Egypt to allow Palestinians to move in and out, but gave no date as it traded blame with Hamas over violations of the ceasefire.
Other unresolved elements of the plan include the disarmament of militants and Gaza's future governance.
ICC rejects Israel appeal bid over arrest warrants
The International Criminal Court rejected Israel's bid to appeal against arrest warrants for its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant over the Gaza war.
In a ruling that made headlines around the world, the ICC in November found "reasonable grounds" to believe Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant bore "criminal responsibility" for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
The ICC also issued arrest warrants for three top leaders from the Palestinian militant movement Hamas but dropped these after their deaths.
The warrants against Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant sparked outrage in Israel and also in the United States, which has since slapped sanctions on top ICC officials.
Mr Netanyahu described it as an "anti-Semitic decision" and the then US president Joe Biden slammed it as "outrageous".
Israel had asked the court in May to dismiss the warrants while it weighed a separate challenge over whether the ICC had jurisdiction in the case.
The court rejected this on 16 July saying there was "no legal basis" for quashing the warrants while the jurisdiction challenge was pending.
A week later, Israel asked for leave to appeal that ruling, but judges ruled that "the issue, as framed by Israel, is not an appealable issue."
"The Chamber therefore rejects the request," said the ICC in a complex, 13-page ruling.
560 tonnes of food entering Gaza daily: UN
Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme said it has brought about 560 tonnes of food per day on average into Gaza since the Israel-Hamas ceasefire took effect, but that still fell short of the scale of need in the Palestinian territory.
With famine conditions present in parts of Gaza, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher said on Wednesday that thousands of aid vehicles would now have to enter Gaza weekly to ease the crisis.
"We're still below what we need, but we're getting there ...The ceasefire has opened a narrow window of opportunity, and WFP is moving very quickly and swiftly to scale up food assistance," WFP spokesperson Abeer Etefa told reporters in Geneva.
The WFP said it had not begun distributions in Gaza City, pointing to the continued closure of two border crossings, Zikim and Erez, with Israel in the north of the enclave where the humanitarian crisis is most acute.
"Access to Gaza City and northern Gaza is extremely challenging," Ms Etefa said, saying convoys of wheat flour and ready-to-eat food parcels were struggling to move along damaged or blocked roads from the south of the war-devastated territory.
Though small amounts of nutrition products have reached the north, relief convoys were still unable to move significant quantities of food there, as well as other areas.
"We've had 57 trucks yesterday (into southern and central Gaza). We consider this a breakthrough, but we're not yet at the level of around 80-100 trucks a day," she said.
UN Security Council to lay foundation for future international force
It comes as France said it and Britain, in coordination with the United States, are working to finalise a UN Security Council resolution in the coming days that would lay the foundation for a future international force in Gaza.
Speaking to reporters in Paris, French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux said such a force needed a UN mandate to provide a strong foundation in international law and ease the process of getting potential contributions from countries.
"France is working closely with its partners on the establishment of such an international mission, which must be formalised through the adoption of a UN Security Council resolution," he said.
"Discussions, notably with the Americans and British, are ongoing to propose this resolution in the coming days."
Mr Trump's administration is speaking with many countries interested in contributing to the force, a White House official said yesterday.
"We are also in conversations about a potential UN Security Council resolution to support this effort," the White House official said.
Paris hosted talks with other European and Arab powers on 10 October to flesh out ideas for Gaza's post-war transition, including how an international force could take shape.
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Diplomats said the stabilisation force would not be a formal United Nations peacekeeping force paid for by the world body.
Instead, a Security Council resolution could mirror action taken by the 15-member body to back the deployment of an international force to combat armed gangs in Haiti.
That resolution spells out and authorises the mission and states contributing to the force to "take all necessary measures" - code for the use of force - to carry out the mandate.
"The stabilisation force will take some time," British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the UK parliament on Tuesday.
"The terms of reference are still being drawn up. There is a United Nations Security Council resolution on the establishment of the force, or I hope there will be, but the wider terms of reference are not yet agreed."
Among the countries the US is speaking to about contributing to the force are Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Qatar, and Azerbaijan, the advisers said on condition of anonymity.
Italy has publicly said it was willing to take part.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto told the United Nations General Assembly on 23 September that if there was a UN resolution, Indonesia was prepared to deploy 20,000 or more troops in Gaza to help secure peace.
The 193-member UN General Assembly last month overwhelmingly voted to endorse a declaration that aimed to advance a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, which supports the deployment of a temporary international stabilisation mission mandated by the UN Security Council.
The war has created a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, with the UN declaring famine in August.
The World Health Organization has warned that infectious diseases are "spiralling out of control", with only 13 of the territory's 36 hospitals even partially functioning.
"Whether meningitis... diarrhoea, respiratory illnesses, we're talking about a mammoth amount of work," Hanan Balkhy, regional director for the UN health body, told AFP in Cairo.
The war has killed at least 67,967 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the United Nations considers credible.
The data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but indicates that more than half of the dead are women and children.
Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
