Hamas hands over bodies of two more Israeli hostages Inbar Hayman and Muhammad Al-Atresh

Hamas transferred to Israel the bodies of two more hostages on Wednesday night, leaving 19 still in Gaza.

Inbar Hayman and Sgt. Maj. Muhammad Al-Atresh were identified through forensic analysis of remains, the Israel Defense Forces announced Thursday morning.

Hayman, 27, was the last female hostage still in Gaza. She was murdered at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, and her body was taken to Gaza, according to IDF intelligence.

Her death was pronounced on Dec. 15, 2023. She leaves behind parents and a brother.

Al-Atresh, from the Bedouin Negev village of Sa’wa, was a tracker in the IDF’s Northern Gaza Brigade. He was killed in combat on the morning of the massacre and his body taken to the Strip.

He was 39 at the time of his death, which was pronounced on June 24, 2024. He leaves behind parents, siblings, two wives and 13 children.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum paid tribute to the two slain hostages, writing on X that Hayman was a writer and artist who “brought her trademark energy and generosity to the Nova Festival, where she came to help others as a volunteer.”

Al-Atresh was a “serious man who always took care of his entire family. Muhammad loved raising horses and dreamed of establishing a horse farm and a livestock area with sheep and goats.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz expressed sympathies to the families of Hayman and Al-Atresh in a Thursday morning X post, calling them heroes.

He recalled hearing about Hayman’s talent in graffiti art from her family and her military service as a commander in the IDF’s Caracal Battalion.

“Ibrahim and Salem, Muhammad’s father and brother, accompanied me on numerous occasions, both in Israel and abroad, in meetings with world leaders to share Muhammad’s story,” Katz wrote. “In one of those meetings with the Belgian Foreign Minister at Kibbutz Nir Oz, Salem asked her to act to help free the hostages, and in a noble manner, he requested that she prioritize the release of the female hostages—at a time when he did not yet know that his brother had fallen.”

Hamas is required to return all of the remaining hostages it and other Palestinian terrorist factions hold in Gaza as part of a US-brokered cease-fire agreement.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office emphasized in a statement released on Thursday morning that Jerusalem “will not compromise” on Hamas’s obligation under the agreement to return all of the remains and “will spare no effort until we return all of the fallen hostages, every last one of them.”

Wednesday’s release followed an Arab media report earlier in the day that five bodies were expected to be redeemed, despite estimates in Israel that only two would be handed over.

Hamas returned three bodies on Wednesday night, along with the remains of a Gazan man.

Four bodies were released on Tuesday. The bodies began to be released after all 20 live hostages were freed after the cease-fire went into effect on Oct. 10.

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday at the White House that “they are looking for them, absolutely” in response to a reporter’s question about the pace of the returns, calling it a “gruesome process.”

“They are digging … there are areas where they are digging and they are finding a lot of bodies, then they have to separate the bodies. You wouldn’t believe this, and some of those bodies have been there a long time and some of them are under rubble. They remove rubble. But there are graves and some are in tunnels, that died in tunnels that are way down under the earth, and the tunnels are like 3 feet high … they lived like this for a long period of time,” he said, adding, “It’s a horrible atrocity.”