The remains were initially handed over to the Red Cross before being transferred to Israel for forensic examination, marking the latest step in implementing a ceasefire aimed at ending over two years of conflict in the Gaza Strip.

On Monday, Hamas had already transferred the remains of four hostages, shortly after releasing the last 20 living hostages under the ceasefire agreement brokered by US President Donald Trump.

Separately, a Gaza hospital reported receiving the bodies of 45 Palestinians returned by Israel as part of the same ceasefire plan.

The hostages whose remains were handed over on Monday included Israeli citizens Guy Iluz, Yossi Sharabi, Daniel Peretz, and Nepalese agriculture student Bipin Joshi.

Yossi Sharabi, 53 at the time of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, was abducted from Kibbutz Beeri.

Daniel Peretz, 22 at the time, was killed on the day of the assault, with his body taken to Gaza.

Guy Iluz, 26, was attending the Nova music festival when militants launched the attack. He was wounded and abducted alive but later died of untreated injuries in captivity, with his death announced in December 2023.

Sharabi’s wife, Nira, expressed relief at the return of her husband’s remains, saying it allows the family to finally bring closure to a nightmare that began over two years ago and provide him a dignified burial, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

Courageous’ Joshi

The military said the final causes of death for the four hostages would be determined following forensic examinations.

Joshi, who was 22 at the time of the attack, was part of a Nepalese agricultural training group that had arrived in Israel three weeks before the Hamas assault.

He was abducted from Kibbutz Alumim.

“It is assessed that he was murdered in captivity during the first months of the war,” the military said.

Joshi’s Nepalese friend Himanchal Kattel, the group’s only survivor, told AFP the attackers had thrown a grenade into their shelter, which Joshi caught and threw away before it exploded, saving Kattel’s life.

Joshi was a “courageous” student, his teacher Sushil Neupane said.

“We were deeply hoping that Bipin would return home. This news hurts us all… Our hope has died,” he said.

Families of hostages whose remains are still being held in Gaza waited anxiously.

“It’s difficult. You know, we kind of had the rollercoaster on the up yesterday and now we’re on the down,” said Rotem Kuper, son of Amiran Kuper, whose remains are held in Gaza.

Job is NOT DONE

In Tel Aviv, people gathered to celebrate the liberation of the living hostages and demand the return of the others’ remains.

“I don’t know what to feel because I didn’t think (we’d) reach this day where all the living hostages will return,” demonstrator Barak Cohen told AFP.

“But still I see great difficulties in returning the remaining dead hostages,” he said.

Another participant, Tovah Baruch, said she was imagining “a world where all the hostages are back, everybody is buried and we work on a new era and with peace”.

The bodies of 45 Palestinians that had been in Israeli custody were handed over to the Nasser Medical Centre in Gaza, the hospital said.

Under the Trump deal, Israel was to turn over the bodies of 15 Palestinians for every deceased Israeli returned.

“A big burden has been lifted, but the job is NOT DONE. THE DEAD HAVE NOT BEEN RETURNED, AS PROMISED! Phase two begins right NOW!!!” Trump said on X.

Palestinian militants are still holding the bodies of 20 hostages, which are expected to be returned under the terms of the ceasefire agreement.

“We are determined to bring everyone back,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after visiting hostages freed Monday at Beilinson Hospital in central Israel.

The freed hostages had experienced weight loss, said hospital director Noa Eliakim Raz.

“Being underground affects all the body’s systems,” she told journalists.

“There is no fixed timetable — each person is recovering at their own pace. It’s important that they heal slowly,” she added.

Twins Ziv and Gali Berman, who were reunited on Monday, said they had been held separately and in complete isolation, according to Channel 12.

The two, who were 28 when abducted, described enduring long periods of hunger, alternating with short intervals when they were better fed, the report said.

WASHINGTON: US and international news outlets, including The New York Times, AP, AFP, and Fox News, on Tuesday declined to sign new restrictive Pentagon media rules, meaning they will be stripped of their press access credentials.

The new rules come after the Defense Department restricted media access inside the Pentagon, forced some outlets to vacate offices in the building, and drastically reduced the number of briefings for journalists.

The media policy “gags Pentagon employees” by threatening retaliation against reporters who seek out information that has not been pre-approved for release, the Pentagon Press Association (PPA) said.

AFP said in a statement Tuesday that it “cannot sign up to the terms of the Pentagon document that would require media to acknowledge insufficiently clear new policies that appear to fly in the face of US constitutional principles and of the basic tenets of journalism.”

“We shall continue to cover the Pentagon and the US military freely and fairly, as we have done for decades,” the agency added.

TV networks ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC issued a joint statement saying they will not sign the new rules, which would “restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues.”

Alongside Fox, other conservative outlets, The Washington Times and Newsmax are also reportedly refusing to agree to the new policy, which could see a total of some 100 press passes revoked.

The new rules are the latest in a series of moves that restrict journalists’ access to information from the Pentagon, the nation’s single largest employer with a budget in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

The Defense Department announced earlier this year that eight media organizations, including The Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NBC and NPR had to vacate their dedicated office spaces in the Pentagon, alleging that there was a need to create room for other — predominantly conservative — outlets.

It has also required journalists to be accompanied by official escorts if they go outside a limited number of areas in the Pentagon — another new restriction on the press.

And it has drastically reduced the number of briefings for journalists — holding some half a dozen this year, compared to an average of two or more per week under president Joe Biden’s administration, which left office in January.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth — a former Fox News host and Army National Guard veteran — has campaigned against leaks from the Defense Department.

But he was inadvertently involved in the release of sensitive information earlier this year, sharing details about upcoming strikes against Yemen’s Huthi rebels in a chat on messaging app Signal to which a journalist had been mistakenly added.

Hegseth has also reportedly used Signal to discuss US strikes on Yemen with his wife and other people not usually involved in such discussions.

His use of Signal has prompted an investigation by the Pentagon inspector general’s office

An army commander who led a mutiny in Madagascar said on Tuesday the military had taken power after President Andry Rajoelina was impeached by lawmakers and forced to flee the country following weeks of youth-led protests.

Rajoelina had refused to step down despite escalating Gen Z demonstrations demanding his resignation and widespread defections in the army.

“We have taken the power,” Colonel Michael Randrianirina declared on national radio and said that the military was dissolving all institutions except the lower house of parliament or the National Assembly.

Randrianirina later told reporters a committee led by the military would rule the country for a period of up to two years alongside a transitional government before organising new elections.

“The following institutions are suspended: the Senate, the High Constitutional Court, the Independent National Electoral Commission, the High Court of Justice, and the High Council for the Defence of Human Rights and the Rule of Law,” a statement from the country’s military leaders said.

In a day of turmoil for the nation off southern Africa’s coast, the 51-year-old leader, whose whereabouts are unknown, earlier sought to dissolve the lower house by decree.

But lawmakers went ahead with a vote to impeach him, leaving the country in a constitutional deadlock which the military seized upon to declare they were taking charge.

Rajoelina, who himself came to power in a coup in 2009, condemned the power grab by the military in a statement.

Military suspends institutions

Randrianirina, a commander in the elite CAPSAT army unit that played a key role in Rajoelina’s 2009 coup, broke ranks with him last week.

In a defiant address to the nation on Monday night, Rajoelina said that he had been forced to move to a safe place because of threats to his life. An opposition official, a military source and a foreign diplomat told Reuters he had fled the country on Sunday aboard a French military plane.

His isolation increased further on Tuesday when even lawmakers from his ruling coalition, which holds a parliamentary majority, voted to impeach him on charges of engaging in activities deemed incompatible with presidential duties.

Rajoelina had repeatedly warned in recent days that an attempted coup was underway in the Indian Ocean island nation.

Escalating demonstrations 

Demonstrations first erupted in the country on September 25 over water and power shortages and quickly escalated into an uprising over broader grievances, including corruption, bad governance and a lack of basic services.

The anger mirrored recent protests against ruling elites elsewhere, including Nepal and Morocco.

Earlier on Tuesday, at Antananarivo’s 13 May Square, along the main drag lined with palm trees and French colonial buildings, thousands of protesters danced, marched, sang and waved banners denouncing Rajoelina as a French stooge because of his dual citizenship and support from Madagascar’s former coloniser.

Many were waving Malagasy flags and the signature Gen Z protest banner of a skull and crossbones from the Japanese “One Piece” anime series.

At one point, Randrianirina took the stage and asked: “Are you ready to accept a military takeover?”, drawing cheers of approval from the crowd.

Later, as news of the military takeover filtered through to protesters, many were jubilant.

“We’re so happy Andry Rajoelina is finally gone … We will start again,” high-school student Fih Nomensanahary said, with four of her friends cheering alongside her.

Others were more cautious. “They need to hand over to a civilian administration quickly and have an election,” said Rezafy Lova, a 68-year-old IT consultant.

Economy in tatters

CAPSAT had joined the protesters over the weekend, saying it would refuse to fire on them. It went on to take charge of the military and appointed a new army chief, prompting Rajoelina to warn on Sunday of an illegal attempt to seize power.

Since then, the paramilitary gendarmerie and the police have also broken ranks with Rajoelina.

Madagascar, where the average age is less than 20, has a population of about 30 million, three-quarters of whom live in poverty. Between its independence in 1960 and 2020, GDP per capita plunged 45%, according to the World Bank.