GAZA CITY, Palestine

Local authorities in Gaza late Tuesday accused Israel of stealing organs from the bodies of Palestinians and urged for an international probe into it.

In a statement, the Gaza-based government media office said the examination of bodies revealed that their shapes changed significantly due to the theft of vital organs from the corpses.

It added that the Israeli army handed bodies without their names and refused to specify from where they were seized.

It also said that the Israeli army repeated such an act during the ongoing war on Gaza and also exhumed bodies from graveyards.

The statement criticized what it said "the silent position of the international organizations operating in Gaza, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, towards such an awful crime by the (Israeli) occupation."

The Israeli authorities are yet to comment on the accusations.

Early on Tuesday, the Israeli authorities released the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army who were detained during its ground operation.

The Health Ministry in Gaza received the bodies through the Kerem Shalom border crossing in the southern Gaza Strip, said an Anadolu correspondent in the field.

The Endowments and Religious Affairs Ministry in Gaza was in charge of their burials in mass graves, said the correspondent.

"The UN had informed us in advance of the arrival of a number of martyrs to the Gaza Strip, estimated to be around 80 bodies," Marwan Al-Hams, the director of Mohammed Yousef El-Najar Hospital in Rafah city, told Anadolu.

"The bodies arrived inside a container, some intact, while others were in pieces, and some others had decomposed," he added.

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar