Israel has identified the body of a second dead hostage near a hospital in Gaza City

The Israeli army announced today that it found a second body of a dead hostage near the Ash Shifa hospital in Gaza City, DPA reported.

The body of 19-year-old soldier Noah Marciano, abducted by militants of the Palestinian Islamist movement “Hamas” in a border area on October 7, has been found in a building near the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces announced today in social platform “X”.

Marciano’s body was identified by experts in Israel last night. The cause of her death has not yet been announced.

Earlier, the Israeli army said it found the body of 65-year-old hostage Yehudit Weiss in a building adjacent to the hospital yesterday.

Marciano’s death was confirmed by the Israeli military earlier on Tuesday. At the time, it was not yet clear where the military got the information about the woman’s death and whether the body had already been handed over to the Israeli army, DPA noted. It was the first time Israel confirmed the death of a hostage that had already been announced by Hamas.

The Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, had shared a video on the Telegram app of a woman who looked like Noah Marciano. A close-up shows a bloody wound on the woman’s head as she lies with her eyes closed on a bloody sheet. The recording’s captions say 19-year-old Marciano was killed in a “Zionist enemy airstrike” on November 9. DPA makes the stipulation that the information was not confirmed by an independent source at the time, BTA reported.

An Israeli army spokesman said today that it would locate the remaining hostages and return them to Israel. The Israeli military will not surrender until this mission is completed, he declared.

In their surprise attack on Israeli territory on October 7, Hamas fighters took about 240 hostages in the Gaza Strip, and in the bloodshed in the border areas of Israel, about 1,200 people died, most of them civilians, DPA recalls.