Palestinian fighters loaded four black coffins onto International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) vehicles in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on Thursday.

The ICRC set up white canvases to block some of the crowd from seeing the coffins being loaded into the vehicles.

The four black coffins were displayed on the stage ahead of the handover of the captives' bodies, each with a photo of a captive, including Shiri Bibas, her two young sons Kfir and Ariel, and a fourth captive, Oded Lifshitz.

‘We wanted your sons to return alive’: Hamas tells families of killed Israeli captives

Hamas said it sought to keep the Israeli captives in its custody alive, but they were killed by the Israeli army under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on continuing the war on Gaza.

Hamas said in a statement it “preserved the lives of the occupation prisoners”, provided them with what it could, and “treated them humanely, but their army killed them along with their captors”.

“Criminal Netanyahu is crying today over the bodies of his prisoners who returned to him in coffins, in a blatant attempt to evade responsibility for their killing in front of his audience,” Hamas added.

While addressing the families of the killed Israeli captives – the families of Bibas and Lifshitz – it said: “We would have preferred your sons to return to you alive, but your army and government leaders chose to kill them instead of bringing them back.”