The Israeli army claimed at dawn on Friday that one of the bodies it received from Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip on Thursday was not an Israeli prisoner, as internal criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the prisoner file continues.

In a statement, the Israeli army said: ‘During the diagnostic process carried out by the Forensic Medicine Institute, it was determined that one of the bodies handed over on Thursday did not belong to Sherry Bibas or to any other prisoner or prisoners’, describing the body as ‘unidentified and not yet identified’.

Hamas confirmed the falsity of the Israeli version and announced that the three bodies handed over belonged to Sherry Silverman Bibas and her two children, who were killed in an Israeli bombardment of Gaza on 29 November.