Israel's Drone Film Shows Hamas Burying a Body, Then 'Finding' It

Israel released drone footage on Tuesday that it said showed Hamas operatives staging the discovery of the remains of the Israeli hostage Ofir Tzarfati in Gaza City, before handing them to the Red Cross.

The video, shot by a military drone, shows operatives carrying a white body bag out of a building in the Shejaiya neighbourhood at 4.07pm, laying it in a pit that had already been dug, and covering it with sand. Red Cross personnel arrived six minutes later, at 4.13pm. The operatives then brought in a tractor and uncovered the same bag, presenting it as a first discovery in front of the organisation's representatives. "They covered it with dirt and called the Red Cross," soldiers who watched the footage said. "When the organisation's members arrived with cameras, the terrorists 'discovered' the body." The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the sequence was recorded in full and shared in real time with United States officials stationed at the American coordination centre in Kiryat Gat, in southern Israel.

According to Israeli assessments, the bag held partial remains of Tzarfati, whose body had been recovered by Israeli soldiers and reburied in Israel in December 2023. Hamas exhumed and reburied remains in order to stage the Red Cross visit; media reports said a body was taken from a tunnel shaft in Gaza's Tufah area, reburied, and then "rediscovered" on camera. A casket containing the remains was passed to Israel late on Monday night.

Who Ofir Tzarfati was

Tzarfati, 27, an electrical engineering student at Ariel University, was abducted from the Nova music festival on 7 October 2023 while celebrating his birthday. He was declared dead weeks later and his body was recovered by Israeli troops in Gaza on 1 December. The festival, held in the western Negev about 5km from the Gaza boundary near Kibbutz Re'im, was the single deadliest site of that day: an IDF investigation published in April 2025 counted 378 people killed there and 44 abducted, according to a compiled account of the massacre.

His family were shown the footage before it was made public and called the act a "despicable" manipulation. "We went to sleep tonight expecting and hoping that another family would close a two-year torturous circle and have their loved one returned for burial," they said in a statement. "But once again, there was a deception at the expense of our family as we try to recover." It was, they said, the third time they had been forced to open their son's grave and rebury him. Tzarfati's partner, Shoval Gal, said she and other friends survived the attack because of his actions and encouragement.

What the Red Cross does, and does not do

The International Committee of the Red Cross draws its role in these handovers narrowly, and the distinction matters here. It describes itself as a neutral intermediary rather than a negotiator; it says it will not participate in, be present at or facilitate any transfer of human remains without an agreement already in place between the parties; and it states plainly that it does not sort, screen or examine the deceased, which is the responsibility of the parties themselves, according to its published guidance on its work on the hostages. In other words, the organisation collects what it is given, and does not verify it.

The clause Hamas is accused of breaking

Under the ceasefire brokered by the United States, which took effect in October 2025, Hamas undertook to return all 48 remaining hostages (20 living and 28 dead), with Israel releasing 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and about 1,700 others detained after 7 October 2023, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The living came out on schedule; the dead did not. Netanyahu's office called the staged recovery a clear violation of the agreement by Hamas, and Israeli security officials convened emergency consultations on how to respond, the Times of Israel reported the same day.

What is still unclear

The IDF said it was investigating how Hamas exploited the Red Cross presence, and no findings had been published. The International Committee of the Red Cross had not publicly commented on the footage at the time of the announcement. The original release said the remains of 13 hostages were still in Gaza and that Israeli officials believed Hamas could reach most of them but was delaying deliberately; that assessment was not accompanied by evidence in the statement.