Hamas fighters planned to exhume the dead bodies of British soldiers buried in Gaza and blackmail the government over their release, according to a document shared by Israeli officials.

There are around 3000 Commonwealth troops buried in Gaza City following the First and Second World Wars and, according to a secret document shared with The Telegraph, Hamas forces intended to hold them "prisoner" to force the British government to acquiesce to their demands.

According to the publication, IDF forces in Khan Younis found the seven-page document in January.

It was reported that the Israelis are of the view that the document was written on or around October 5 2022, shortly after the time then-Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said she wanted the British embassy to be moved to Jerusalem.

The document said: "If the British government does not meet the aforementioned demands, the Gaza municipality will act to remove all the corpses from the cemeteries and collect them in a special location by judicial order, declaring that the corpses are considered captive until a solution or deal is found.

"The British government will find itself in an embarrassing position in front of the British people, its political elite and its military if any country desecrates the corpses of its soldiers."

The threat predates the war in Gaza, however the cemetery holding British soldiers is still under Hamas control and as such it is still vulnerable, the Israelis insist.

An official told the publication: "The tactic depicted in this document is intended to quite literally terrorise the people of the UK as a whole in order to influence political decisions.

"There is no way to rule out that Hamas will use this strategy or other similar ones to influence external affairs or anything within their agenda in the future."

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) chaired by the UK Defence Secretary, which officially runs the cemetery, told the Telegraph in a statement: "Our sites in Gaza have always been widely respected and have been maintained by a dedicated staff drawn from the local community - indeed one family has more than a century of collective service to our war dead.

"Although those colleagues have been evacuated for their safety, prior to the current conflict the CWGC’s cemeteries in Gaza were a focal point for local people and hugely respected for both their beauty and their historical importance”.