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LAST UPDATE | 22 Feb
THE FAMILY OF Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas has announced that remains returned to Israel the day before were hers.
The Israeli kibbutz community of Nir Oz announced Bibas’s death this morning, after the International Committee of the Red Cross said it had transferred more human remains to Israeli authorities without saying whose they were.
“After the identification process at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, this morning we received the news we feared the most. Our Shiri was murdered in captivity and has now returned home to her sons, husband, sister, and all her family to rest,” the Bibas family said in a statement.
“Despite our fears for their fate, we kept hoping we would get to hug them again, and now we are broken and grieving.
“For 16 months, we sought certainty, and now that we have it, there is no comfort in it, but we hope for the beginning of a closure,” the family said in a statement on Instagram.
Hamas last night claimed it handed over Shiri Bibas’s remains, saying her body had likely been “mistakenly mixed” with that of another woman under rubble in Gaza.
Investigations were launched by Hamas and Israel after it was discovered that the Palestinian militant group had mistakenly given the wrong remains to authorities in Tel Aviv on Thursday.
The Israeli government also accused Hamas of killing Bibas, her children and journalist Oded Lifshitz. Hamas claimed that the hostages, taken after the 7 October attack in Israel in 2023, were killed following airstrikes by the Israeli military in Gaza.
Hamas said the body of Shiri Bibas had likely been “mistakenly mixed” with the remains of others who were killed and buried under rubble in Gaza following Israeli air strikes.
One Hamas official told the AFP news agency that the airstrikes were targeting areas where hostages were being kept and that Bibas and her sons were killed during the attacks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the remains were of “a Gazan woman”. Israel never confirmed their deaths, leaving the Bibas family and Israelis more broadly with a sliver of hope that they may still have been alive.
“Hamas had offered to hand over their bodies in November 2023, but Netanyahu refused at the time,” a Hamas official said on Friday. Israel and Netanyahu have rejected that account.
The Bibas family has blamed Netanyahu for “abandoning” the young boys and their mother, while also saying that they were not seeking revenge “right now”.
Israeli authorities said that two of the four bodies they received are those of Shiri Bibas’ young sons, Kfir and Ariel. Military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on Telegram that Israel had identified the boys’ remains, accusing Palestinian “terrorists” of killing them.
“According to the assessment of the relevant authorities and based on available intelligence and diagnostic indicators, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were brutally killed in captivity in November 2023 by Palestinian terrorists,” Adraee said.
Another body was confirmed by Israeli authorities as that of Oded Lifshitz, who Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office said had been “murdered in captivity”. He was a veteran journalist and long-time defender of Palestinian rights.
But authorities said that the fourth body was not that of the Bibas boys’ mother and “does not match any other kidnapped individuals”.
Kfir and Ariel were kidnapped alive with their mother yet returned in coffins and alone.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) February 21, 2025
Hamas murdered these innocent babies in captivity. We’re heartbroken and outraged—as the world should be. pic.twitter.com/JGuH7YJxjv
Prime Minister Netanyahu accused Hamas of committing a “cruel and evil” violation of the Gaza ceasefire deal.
“We will act with determination to bring Shiri home, along with all of our captives – both the living and the fallen – and ensure that Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement,” Netanyahu said in a video statement.
“In an unimaginably cynical manner, they did not return Shiri to her small children, the little angels, and instead placed the body of a Gazan woman in a coffin,” he said.
Hamas responded by saying: ”We reject the threats issued by Benjamin Netanyahu as part of his attempts to improve his image.”
Later, Netanyahu called on the nations of the world to condemn the “execution” of the hostages.
“The entire civilised world should condemn these horrific murders,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “Who kidnaps a little boy and a baby and murders them? Monsters. That’s who… I vow that I will not rest until the savages who executed our hostages are brought to justice”.
The developments are likely to further jeopardise an already fragile ceasefire that has been in place since 19 January.
The repatriation of the bodies was part of the six-week initial phase of the ceasefire, which has so far led to the release of 19 living Israeli hostages in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinians who were held in Israeli prisons and detention centres.
Despite the ceasefire being in place, Israeli forces in Gaza have continued to kill Palestinians in the devastated enclave. Hamas has also accused Israel of failing to supply sufficient aid to the Gaza Strip, one of the key elements of the deal.
Hamas spokesperson Abdul Latif al-Qanou has accused Prime Minister Netanyahu of deliberately “stalling the implementation of the second phase of the ceasefire agreement”.
Israel will free 602 Palestinians from jails tomorrow as part of the deal, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group.
Among those released, 445 are individuals from Gaza who were arrested after Hamas’ October 7 attack that sparked the war, 60 are serving long sentences, 50 are serving life sentences, and 47 were re-arrested after a 2011 prisoner exchange, Amani Sarahneh, spokeswoman for the NGO, told AFP.
Hamas’s armed wing confirmed it will hand over six hostages tomorrow in the captive exchange.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement that the release would take place as planned.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum published the names of the six hostages earlier this week, naming them as Eliya Cohen, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, Hisham Al-Sayed and Avera Mengistu.
With reporting from AFP
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