‘I lost my arm and ate dog food to survive’: The unprecedented loss of limbs in Ukraine
“Incoming!”
One word and then Gosha’s life changed forever.
The mortar exploded right next to the 30-year-old Ukrainian soldier.
If his friend, Vasian, hadn’t shouted, Gosha wouldn’t have turned. The mortar would have exploded in his face. Instead it was his arm.
“Blood was streaming like hell,” Gosha recalls.
Warped metal and broken cars in the ruins of Azovstal
It was early May last year. The two friends were at the heart of a battle that would come to define the ferocity of the Ukraine war.
“I reached for my tourniquet and gave it to him. ‘Higher, Vasian!” He tightened it. It didn’t tighten well … and then he said ‘f***, what shall I do?’ I passed out.
“When I regained consciousness, I said: ‘Vasian, finish me off, because I’m f****** done'”.
Vasian wouldn’t do it. He refused his friend’s pleas. Sixteen months on, at a small prosthetics clinic in the United States, Gosha tells a story of horror and survival which reflects a much wider challenge.
At least 25,000 Ukrainians have lost limbs since Vladimir Putin’s invasion last year.
Accurate figures are hard to verify and could be much higher.
The number of Russian soldiers to have been maimed is not known but is thought to be huge too.
Neither Ukrainian nor Russian officials are willing, officially, to reveal a figure which underlines the cost of the war.
Gosha is treated by clinician Michelle Intintoli
Read more:
In pictures: the pounding of Azovstal
The surgeon smuggled into Mariupol
Thousands of amputees
“The number is not official, and some of them are multiple limb loss,” Mike Corcoran, the clinic’s co-founder says of the Ukrainian estimate of 25,000.
“That’s a stadium full of amputees.”
In 18 months of war in Ukraine, there have been at least 10 times the number of Ukrainian amputees than Americans maimed over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
Gosha is the 39th Ukrainian soldier to come to the Medical Centre Orthotics and Prosthetics (MCOP) just outside Washington DC. We met him on the day he was first fitted with a prototype prosthetic arm. It is the start of several weeks of rehabilitation and therapy at the clinic.
Eventually, he will leave with a carbon fibre version of his missing limb.
Prosthetician Mike Corcoran speaks to Sky News
The clinicians at MCOP are experts in military prosthetics and have spent two decades at the world-renowned Walter Reed Medical Center treating American soldiers.
But Ukraine’s challenge is different. It is compounded by the intensity of the conflict and rudimentary amputations.
The battlefield first aid straps, called tourniquets, designed to be attached to the limb just above the wound to stem bleeding, are often fitted too high and left on for too long. The bleeding is stopped but the cells in the limb are killed in the process.
The consequence – a whole arm or leg will need to be removed rather than just part of it. And that process is carried out in the most horrific of conditions.
Inside the ruined steelworks. Pic: AP
‘The guys were rotting alive – it was like a horror movie’
Gosha was wounded in the battle for the Azovstal steelworks in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
The two-month siege ended on 17 May, 2022 with the surrender of the last remaining Ukrainian soldiers. Gosha was among them and taken into Russian custody.
The battle was defining in its intensity and, ultimately, its futility.
Units from Ukraine’s Azov Battalion were cornered in one small part of the sprawling plant. The soldiers slept in an underground room which doubled as the battlefield clinic.
“People were lying together, one next to the other. They amputated arms and operated in the same room we were lying in,” Gosha recalls.
“They were cutting someone’s arm off. Everybody was watching it. On the floor there was a bag full of arms and legs.”
Gosha explains how the injured lay in a long narrow room lined with rows of bunk beds, three or four high.
“The guys were rotting alive, everyone was stinking, everyone had some infection,” Gosha says.
Life inside the Azovstal steelworks seen in Gosha’s photo
After his initial amputation in the bunker with a hack-saw, he said the wound “started to fester again” so his arm was amputated at a higher point.
Two weeks later, the steelworks was captured by the Russians. As a prisoner of war, Gosha spent more than a month without running water or painkillers.
He described how the ‘orcs’ – his slang for Russians – also took the Ukrainian soldiers’ supply of bandages.
He was finally released in a prisoner exchange. It marked the beginning of a long journey which has brought him, for a few weeks, to America.
Ukrainian soldiers on a bus after leaving the steelworks. Pic: AP
‘You can’t say no’
The MCOP clinic does not charge for its treatment of Ukrainian soldiers and prosthetics is an expensive business. One arm can cost $100,000 (£81,000) and a hook in place of a hand is an additional $8,000 (£6,500). A lot of Ukrainians ask for the hook because it’s more versatile.
“You can’t say no”, says Mike.
The fortunate fraction of Ukrainians who make it here to MCOP do so with the assistance of many charities including United Help Ukraine and Operation Renew Prosthetics in partnership with the Brother’s Brother Foundation.
The plan, eventually, is to open a clinic inside Ukraine. For now, Mike and his team are shuttling back and forth to Ukraine to train locals, deliver donated equipment and conduct in-country treatment.
Gosha tries his prosthetic
“It’s going to take more than our company and me. It’s going to take hundreds of prosthetists many years to actually take care of all these wounded people, not just military, civilians as well,” Mike says.
He predicts the challenges Ukraine faces with amputations will, eventually, make it the world leader in prosthetics. But it will take time and huge investment.
The growing list of people with lost limbs will, Mike said, “have to be addressed at some point”.
The limits of US aid
The US government has supplied billions of dollars of weaponry in tranches of ‘security assistance packages’ for Ukraine. But these packages do not allow for the funding of treatment or sharing of medical resources to treat injured Ukrainian soldiers.
In a statement, a spokesman for the US Department of Defence (DoD), Lt Colonel Garron J Garn, said: “DoD has not received any specific requests to enhance prosthetic care for wounded Ukrainian service members.
“However, there are several members of Ukrainian Armed Forces currently at Landstuhl (a US military medical facility in Germany) receiving treatment, outside of specific prosthetic care. We applaud the work of various charities who are involved in getting Ukrainians requiring prosthetic care.”
Cooking dog food to survive
Colonel Garn added that $14m (£11.3m) had been “obligated to support wounded service members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces for its budget in 2023”.
As Mike Corcoran and I talk, another Ukrainian arrives for his final appointment at the clinic.
Ilia Mykhalchuk is a double amputee and is ready for his final fitting of two state-of-the-art carbon fiber arms.
His story is horrific. One arm was blown off and the other peppered with shrapnel after an anti-tank rocket hit his vehicle in another defining battle of this war, in the city of Bakhmut.
The 36-year-old was then captured by Russia’s notorious Wagner Group of mercenary fighters.
“They knocked him out with whatever anaesthesia they had in the basement of a house,” Mike said.
“Basically it’s like a guillotine. They cut off both his arms and they didn’t even close them up, they just bandaged him. So it wasn’t clean; just the bone. The cut end of the bone is protruding and that makes for a harder fitting.”
The prosthetics are custom-made and can cost thousands of dollars
The scars left by the Wagner Group are both physical and mental.
“They made fun of him after they cut off both his arms. He saw torture, men being set on fire and having their fingers cut off. He’s got a lot of PTSD,” Mike said.
Watching Ilia, as the final fitting is completed, that internal trauma is clear.
Ilia Mykhalchuk with prosthetists Mike Corcoran and Jamie Vandersea
‘He never leaves my head’
Back in conversation with Gosha, more revelations which reflect the reality of this war and his ongoing trauma.
I asked about his friend Vasian – the comrade who had called out ‘incoming’ and had saved his life.
Gosha reveals that Vasian, and his pet dog, who was their companion in war were taken by the Russians and have not been seen since.
“Vasian never leaves my head,” Gosha said. “He is my sworn brother.”
Senior Sailor Spivak Vasyl (Vasian) with his dog Sofa
Gosha explained how he, Vasian and the dog, a Pit Bull Terrier called Sofa, would share dog food. It was all they could find in the sprawling steelworks. They would cook it. “It didn’t taste bad,” he says.
“We made beds for ourselves, and we put the dog between us, in the middle, and we slept like that, hugging. The dog could get some warmth. We were always together. And I promised him: “When we return back home, when I baptise my son, you will be the godfather.”
“My son is five now, he has not been baptised yet because I’m waiting for Vasian to return.”
Gosha wants to go back to the frontline. “I want to fight, if it’s possible, as a gun commander in the artillery.”
“Nobody wants to live in captivity. Russia will continue to terrorise, kill, capture, destroy. They won’t calm down until you beat the f****** hell out of them.”
With additional reporting by Eleanor Deeley, US Producer
“Follow me and be careful,” says the commander, as he leads us down a narrow path in the dead of night.
The overgrown tract had once been occupied by the Russians, and there are landmines scattered on the side of the path.
But the men with us are more concerned about the threat from above.
Members of a unit in Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade, they run a covert operation from an underground cellar, tucked behind a ruined farmhouse.
And what they are doing in this old vegetable store is pushing the boundaries of war.
“This is the interceptor called Sting,” says the commander, named Betsik, holding up a cylindrical device with four propellers.
“It’s an FPV [first-person view] quad, it’s very fast, it can go up to 280km. There’s 600 grams of explosive packed in the cap.”
The Sting interceptor drone used by the Ukrainians
However, he had not told us the most important thing about this bulbous drone.
“It can easily destroy a Shahed,” he says with determination.
Devastating and indiscriminate drone attacks
Once viewed as a low-cost curiosity, the Iranian-designed Shahed drone has turned into a collective menace.
As Russia’s principal long-range attack weapon, enemy forces have fired 44,228 Shaheds into Ukraine this year, with production expected to rise to 6,000 per month by early next year.
A Shahed-136 drone used by Russia amid its attack on Ukraine, on display in London. Pic: Reuters
The Russians are also changing the way they use them, launching vast, coordinated waves at individual cities.
The damage can be devastating and indiscriminate. This year, more 460 civilians have been killed by these so-called kamikaze weapons.
Russia’s strategy is straightforward. By firing hundreds of Shaheds on a single night, they aim to overload Ukraine’s air defences.
It is something Betsik reluctantly accepts.
Betsik observes the work of the team on in the cellar
Still, his unit has come up with a groundbreaking way to tackle it.
Perched in the centre of the vegetable store, we watch a youthful drone pilot and a couple of navigators staring at a bank of screens.
“Guys, there’s a Shahed 10km away from us. Can we fly there?” asks one of the navigators, called Kombucha.
He had just spotted a Shahed on the radar, but the enemy projectile was just out of reach.
“Well, actually 18 km – it’s too far,” Kombucha says.
“Do you know where it is going?” I ask.
“Yes, Izyum, the city. Flying over Izyum, I hope it won’t hit the city itself.”
Kombucha takes a deep breath.
“It is driving me nuts when you can see it moving, but you can’t do anything about it.”
The chase
The atmosphere soon changes.
“Let’s go. Help me lift the antenna.”
An engineer runs an interceptor drone up to the unit’s ad-hoc launch pad, located on a pile of flattened brick.
“The bomb is armed.”
The drone pilot, called Ptaha, tightens his grip on the controller and launches the Sting into the night sky.
Now, they hunt the Shahed down.
Their radar screen gives them an idea of where to look – but not a precise location.
“Target dropped altitude.”
“How much?”
“360 metres. You’re at 700.”
Instead, they analyse images produced by the interceptor’s thermal camera. The heat from the Shahed’s engine should generate a white spec, or dot, on the horizon. Still, it is never easy to find.
“Zoom out. Zoom out,” mutters Ptaha.
Then, a navigator code-named Magic thrusts his arm at the right-hand corner of the screen.
“There, there, there, b****!”
“I see it,” replies Ptaha.
The pilot manoeuvres the interceptor behind the Russian drone and works to decrease the distance between the two.
The chase is on. We watch as he steers the interceptor into the back of Shahed.
“We hit it,” he shouts.
“Did you detonate?”
“That was a Shahed, that was a Shahed, not a Gerbera.”
Going in for the kill
The Russians have developed a family of drones based on the Shahed, including a decoy called the Gerbera, which is designed to overwhelm Ukrainian defences.
However, the 3rd Brigade tells us these Gerberas are now routinely packed with explosives.
“I can see you’ve developed a particular technique to take them all down,” I suggest to Ptaha. “You circle around and try to catch them from behind?”
“Yes, because if you fly towards it head-on, due to the fact that the speed of the Shahed…”
The pilot breaks off.
“Guys, target 204 here.”
It’s clear that a major Russian bombardment is under way.
“About five to six km,” shouts Magic.
With another target to chase, the unit fires an interceptor into the sky.
Ptaha stares at the interceptor’s thermal camera screen.
The lives of countless Ukrainians depend on this 21-year-old.
“There, I see it. I see it. I see it.”
The team pursues their target before Ptaha goes in for the kill.
“There’s going to be a boom!” says Magic excitedly.
“Closing in.”
On the monitor, the live feed from the drone is replaced by a sea of fuzzy grey.
“Hit confirmed.”
“Motherf*****!”
‘In a few months it will be possible to destroy most of them’
The Russians would launch more than 500 drones that night.
Betsik and his men destroyed five with their Sting interceptors and the commander seemed thrilled with the result.
“I’d rate it five out of five. Nice. Five launches, five targets destroyed. One hundred percent efficiency. I like that.”
Maxim Zaychenko
Nevertheless, 71 long-range projectiles managed to slip through Ukraine’s air defences, despite efforts made to stop them.
The head of the air defence section in 3rd Brigade, Maxim Zaychenko, told us lessons were being learnt in this underground cellar that would have to be shared with the entire Ukrainian army.
“As the number of Shaheds has increased we’ve set ourselves the task of forming combat crews and acquiring the capabilities to intercept them… it’s a question of scaling combat crews with the right personnel and equipment along the whole contact line.”
Betsik speaks to Sky News
Buoyed by the night’s successes, Betsik was optimistic.
“In a few months, like three to five, it will be possible to destroy most of them,” he said.
“You really think that?” I replied.
“This is the future, I am not dreaming about it, I know it will be.”
Photography by Katy Scholes.
Thousands who fled a key frontline city in Sudan’s war as it fell to paramilitaries were targeted in killing fields around it by the group, after the military’s top brass secured their own safe passage.
Warning: Some readers may find content in this article distressing.
More than 60,000 people are still missing and humanitarians fear that Al Fashir’s remaining 200,000 residents are being held hostage by Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters.
In our investigation with Sudan War Monitor and Lighthouse Reports, we can reveal the harrowing fate of civilians and soldiers who fled the city in the hours after senior commanders and officers left the infantry division.
Some 70,000 people have escaped Al Fashir since it was captured on 26 October, according to the DTM matrix of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), but fewer than 10,000 people are accounted for in the nearest safe displacement zones.
In an effort to track down the missing, we analysed dozens of videos and followed crowds of civilians on their way out.
In this first video, we see a group, and two men – the first with a yellow hoodie and black jacket walking beside a dirt berm along with women and children.
An image from the first video
In a later video, we see a crowd of captives that includes the two men – in the same yellow hoodie and red turban.
A video of men sitting on the ground under RSF armed guard shows the women walking through freely, showing they had been separated.
An image from the second video
In another video, we see the man in a red turban in a queue of men who start to run as RSF fighters chase and beat them.
An image from the third video
A source on the ground told us that this single group had around 2,000 captives and only 200 of them arrived at the nearest displacement shelter in Tawila, around 45 miles from Al Fashir.
We geolocated one of the videos of the group walking approximately 5km (three miles) from the nearby town of Geurnei.
We geolocated one of the videos of the group walking three miles from the nearby town of Geurnei. Pic: Copernicus
There, hundreds were rounded up in school buildings.
‘They would execute people in front of us’
The families of doctors held there told Sky News the RSF asked them to pay ransoms to secure their release.
A man who survived captivity in Geurnei with his wife told us he was held with around 300-400 families after being robbed and harassed on his way out of Al Fashir.
“We got to the school and they caught up with us. They starting targeting people – elderly and young – and took them to be detained,” said Abdelhamid.
“They would select people and execute them in front of us and then say – ‘bury your brother’ – and we would cover them with soil. I saw them kill 18 people with my own eyes and then people had to bury them with their bare hands.”
Satellite images from 30 October show mounds of dirt that appear to be new graves added to an existing cemetery, near school buildings in Geurnei.
Read more:
UAE is ‘main backer’ behind Sudan war – intelligence officer
Tens of thousands killed in two days in Sudan city, analysts believe
Others were executed in the fields outside of Al Fashir.
In a video shared on social media, a vehicle is shown pursuing civilians in the countryside.
The driver films as two fighters, one in an RSF patch, stop an unarmed man.
One asks what the man is carrying, and shoots him at point-blank range.
The car continues forward, accelerating towards and narrowly avoiding two unarmed men.
He asks one man if he is carrying anything and says he is “acting as if you are Arab”.
After the driver says “kill them all”, the camera turns back to the man, who appears to have been shot.
The driver then urges those with him to hurry to catch up with those ahead.
This brutality comes after the RSF encircled, starved and shelled Al Fashir for 18 months in their battle with the military for the last regional capital in Darfur under state control.
Several high-level sources told us that top state commanders, officers and political leaders made arrangements for their own safe passage in over 100 vehicles, including some armoured cars, before the 6th infantry division was captured by the RSF in the morning hours of 26 October.
The battle for Al Fashir – and Sudan
Earlier this year, Al Fashir was being suffocated to death by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as they pushed to claim full control of the Darfur region as a base for their parallel government, after the military recaptured the capital Khartoum and other key sites in central Sudan.
On Monday, famine conditions were confirmed in Al Fashir and Kadugli, another besieged city in Sudan’s south, by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
Inside Al Fashir, thousands were bombarded by almost daily shelling from surrounding RSF troops.
The RSF physically reinforced their siege with a berm – a raised earth mound. First spotted by Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, the berm is visible from space.
The Sudan war started in April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between the Sudanese army and the RSF broke out in Khartoum.
The US special envoy to Sudan estimates that 150,000 have been killed, but the exact figure is unknown. Close to 12 million people have been displaced.
After 18 months of surviving forced starvation and shelling, the regional capital and symbolic battleground of Al Fashir fell to the RSF at the end of October.
What does the head of the SAF say?
The commander in chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) Abdel Fattah Al Burhan has said the withdrawal was to spare the city from further destruction, indiscriminate shelling and drone attacks.
In response to our findings, he told Sky News: “The decision to withdraw was unanimous among the armed forces, regular forces, and the joint security committee.
“The withdrawal began with an attack by drones on forces blocking one of the crossings, destroying their positions.
“Later, the forces fought until they broke through the barrier and moved to a location outside the city.
“During the withdrawal, the forces lost more than 300 martyrs, and most of their vehicles were destroyed. They remain besieged.
“They did not leave soldiers behind. Those who remained were tasked with securing the withdrawal, and they performed their duty as required.”
But instead of a co-ordinated withdrawal, a soldier left behind describes an abandoned command.
‘They completely abandoned us’
“The division commander had left the garrison. They completely abandoned us and we were suddenly surrounded 26 to 1 in the morning hours. Suddenly, everything collapsed on us in the defence. We asked what was going on and were told everyone fled,” he said.
“Shortly after, bombs started falling on us. Brigadier General Adam, the artillery commander, refused to withdraw, saying that the division commander had already withdrawn without informing him of the order. The brigadier general, six colonels, and a naval colonel were also captured.”
Testimony from a civilian who fled that morning paints a picture of chaos.
He said: “There was no co-ordination over withdrawal, and it seemed to be a surprise to the remaining fighters on the frontline. Some were leaving the city and others were fighting battles with the RSF.”
As the RSF entered Al Fashir, he told us civilians were massacred.
“The streets were covered in bodies. I saw it for myself. The RSF came into the city and butchered everyone they found. They did not discern between a child, a civilian or the elderly – they executed everyone, a full genocide.”
High-resolution satellite imagery captured by Vantor shows burnt vehicles grouped together south of the berm the RSF built to besiege Al Fashir.
A video we located at the site shows dozens of bodies, in fatigues and civilian clothing, lying lifeless on the ground by burning cars.
Mounting concern over 200,000 people
Fears are mounting over the fate of around 200,000 people left in Al Fashir.
A top RSF commander with knowledge of the operations in the city told us that at least 7,000 people have been killed in Al Fashir in the first five days of capture.
He said RSF fighters systemically targeted civilians from non-Arab tribes and killed groups of 300 to 400 people in some areas. Civilian sources close to the RSF corroborated his death toll, which we cannot independently verify on the ground.
Al Fashir is in a complete telecommunications blackout.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in Sudan has shared in a post on X that their “Humanitarian partners in Sudan are being blocked from reaching A Fashir, North Darfur.
“Civilians are trapped inside, their condition unknown. Aid workers are ready to deliver life-saving support. Access needs to be granted now, in line with international humanitarian law.”
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
The RSF has circulated videos on its social media channels showing trucks delivering aid to Al Fashir’s emaciated civilians.
This comes after months of volunteers and aid workers being killed by RSF fighters while trying to bring in relief during their 18-month siege of enforced starvation and relentless shelling.
What does the RSF say?
The spokesperson for the RSF’s political administration TASIS, Dr Alaa Nugud, told Sky News that the RSF there is a big fake media campaign prepared for the “Al Fashir liberation” and denounced the death toll of at least 7,000, shared by one of their top commanders, as “totally rubbish”.
In response to our report, he said: “Never happened that TASIS forces or any of its constituents killed civilians based on ethnic background, on the other hand this is what was done by SAF and the Muslim brotherhood National Congress Party doctrine during their 39 years of rule.
“SAF’s military intelligence was igniting these ethnic clashes throughout years they used religion to flame war in south Sudan and used racism and ethnicity to ignite war in Darfur.”
He added that “RSF and TASIS forces evacuated more than 800,000 civilians outside Al Fashir”.
“Could they not provide or grant safe passage to civilians? The reality is that the insurance of the continuation of the war and spoiling of all peace platforms… the continuation of this war is the main cause of all atrocities.
“The atrocities are consequences of this war, not the cause of the war. So to stop all these atrocities we have to stop the war and this is not there in SAF agenda.”
The RSF is accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity across Sudan since the war started in April 2023.
The Biden administration accused the RSF of committing genocide in Darfur in 2024, two decades after the group was first accused of genocide in the region as the Janjaweed.
Our previous reporting on Sky News has supported allegations that the UAE militarily supports the RSF, though the country officially denies it.
Additional reporting by Mohamed Zakarea, Sam Doak, Annoa Abekah-Mensah, Aziz Al Nour, Julia Steers, Jack Sapoch, and Klaas van Dijken.
This story was a joint Sky News data and forensics investigation with Sudan War Monitor and Lighthouse Reports.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
Israel’s former top military lawyer has been arrested after admitting leaking a video of soldiers allegedly abusing a Palestinian prisoner.
The growing scandal comes as Israel handed over the bodies of 45 Palestinians, according to health officials in Gaza.
An Israeli official said ex-military advocate Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was taken into custody overnight on Sunday – just a few days after resigning from her post, reported the Associated Press news agency.
She was arrested when a search was carried out along the Tel Aviv beach after concerns for her safety were raised by her family, reported Israel’s Channel 12.
Former chief military prosecutor Colonel Matan Solomesh was also arrested overnight as part of the investigation into the leaked video, reported Israel’s Army Radio.
The leaked footage was aired last year purporting to show an incident involving soldiers and a Palestinian prisoner at the Sde Teiman detention facility in southern Israel.
Hamas said the work to return the bodies of Israeli hostages has been complicated by the devastation in Gaza. Pic: Reuters
The developments came as the bodies of the Palestinians were received at Nasser Hospital, in Gaza, on Monday morning, a Gaza health ministry spokesperson told the Associated Press.
The release of the bodies came a day after Israel said Hamas had handed over the remains of three Israeli troops taken hostage on 7 October 2023.
Israel said the troops were killed in the attack on southern Israel before their bodies were dragged by militants back to Gaza.
A Hamas statement said the remains were found on Sunday in a tunnel in southern Gaza.
The Red Cross drove the remains of three more hostages across Gaza to the Israeli army at the weekend. Pic: AP
The three troops have been identified as Captain Omer Neutra, an American-Israeli, Staff Sergeant Oz Daniel and Colonel Assaf Hamami, according to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Since the ceasefire started on 10 October, Palestinian militants have released the remains of 20 hostages, with eight now remaining in Gaza.
Hamas has released one or two bodies every few days.
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Can ceasefire hold despite Israel’s ‘ferocious’ attacks?
Israel has demanded faster progress and, in some cases, has said the remains were not those of any hostage.
Hamas has said the work to return the bodies has been complicated by the widespread devastation in Gaza.
Israel has been releasing the remains of 15 Palestinians for each hostage returned.
Health officials in Gaza have struggled to identify bodies without access to DNA kits.
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Only 75 of the 225 Palestinian bodies returned since the ceasefire began have been identified, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
About 1,200 people were killed and 251 kidnapped in the Hamas terror attack that sparked the war two years ago.
Officials in Hamas-run Gaza say more than 68,600 Palestinians have died.
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