Hamas is capable of returning a double-digit number of deceased hostages' remains, an Israeli source told public broadcaster KAN News on Thursday.
The terror group is not making enough effort to return the remains of the hostages still held in terror captivity, even though it knows the burial locations, according to the source.
After the remains of Inbar Hayman and Muhammad al-Atarash were returned on Wednesday night, the remains of 19 hostages remained in Gaza.
While Israel acknowledges that it may take a long time to locate, retrieve, and transfer the remains of some of the hostages, exacerbated by the war causing destruction to infrastructure, there is an assessment that Hamas knows the locations of more hostage remains, which it could return if it wished to, KAN reported.
Israel told the Trump administration that Hamas is not doing enough to recover hostage remains, and thus, the Gaza deal cannot move into the next phase unless this changes, two Israeli officials and one US official told Axios on Wednesday.
Hamas knows where additional remains are, source tells 'Post'
Hamas knows very well where the remains belonging to at least some of the hostages who have not been returned are located, an Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
The terror group has stated several times that it cannot locate all the murdered hostages in the strip, stressing as recently as earlier the same evening that it has already handed over all the hostages it could access.
Locating the remaining hostages would require extensive efforts and special equipment, the terror group claimed.
Amichai Stein contributed to this report.