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President Donald Trump said Hamas will disarm in adherence with the peace agreement between the militant group and Israel or "we will disarm them" while speaking to reporters at the White House on Tuesday (October 14).
“Well, they’re going to disarm because they said they were going to disarm, and if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them," Trump said while hosting Argentine President Javier Milei via the New York Post. “I don’t have to explain that to you, but if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them. They know I’m not playing games. OK?”
Trump acknowledged that Hamas "misrepresented" the number of dead Israeli hostages it had in its possession when it handed over eight of the 28 reported between Monday (October 13) and Tuesday.
“If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them, and it’ll happen quickly and perhaps violently, but they will disarm. You understand me,” Trump said.
One of the bodies returned to Israel by Hamas was reported to not be one of the deceased Israeli hostages, which has threatened the historic peace agreement between the two sides, the Israeli Defense Forces announced in a statement shared on Wednesday (October 15).
"Following the completion of examinations at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, the fourth body handed over to Israel Hamas does not match any of the hostages," the statement reads via the New York Post.
Israel had previously accused Hamas of not meeting the requirements of the two sides' ceasefire agreement by only releasing eight of the 28 bodies of dead hostages. All 20 remaining living Israeli hostages were released back to their home country on Monday in adherence with the first phase of the peace agreement.
It wasn't immediately clear who the non-Israeli hostage body belonged to at the time of publication.
“Hamas is required to make all necessary efforts to return the deceased hostages,” the Israeli military added in its statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a public demand for Hamas to fulfill the requirements of releasing all the remaining hostages' bodies back to Israel following the incident.
“We will not compromise on this and will not stop our efforts until we return the last deceased hostage, until the last one,” he said via the New York Post.