Hamas is set to deliver the bodies of four hostages on Thursday, including the Bibas family, who have become symbols of Israel’s hostage issue since the Gaza war began.
The release of the bodies is the first time Hamas has handed over remains since its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel sparked the war.
The bodies of Shiri Bibas, her two young boys, Kfir and Ariel, and a fourth captive, Oded Lifshitz, will be returned to the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, according to the Palestinian militant group.
Footage of their kidnapping, captured and aired by Hamas militants during their onslaught on Israel, shows the mother and her two sons, Ariel, four, and Kfir, nine months old, being taken from their house near the Gaza border.
Yarden Bibas, the boys’ father and Shiri’s husband, was kidnapped independently on October 7, 2023, and later released from the Gaza Strip in a previous hostage-prisoner exchange on February 1.
The return of their bodies is part of the first phase of Israel and Hamas’ fragile truce, which went into effect on January 19 following more than 15 months of fighting in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Thursday would be “a very difficult day for the State of Israel—a heartbreaking day, a day of grief.”
During the first phase of the truce, terrorists have freed 19 Israeli captives in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners through a series of Red Cross-mediated swaps.
Israel claims that eight of the remaining 14 Gaza hostages who are eligible for release under phase one have died.
The Bibas family members have become national symbols of the hostage crisis, embodying the anguish that has swept the country since the Hamas attack.
While their deaths are widely accepted as reality overseas after Hamas said they were killed in an Israeli air attack early in the war, Israel has never corroborated the claim, and many, including the Bibas family, remain skeptical.
Late on Wednesday, the Israeli campaign group Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it had received “heartbreaking” news of the deaths of the three Bibas family members.
The Bibas family stated that it will await confirmation from formal channels.
“Should we receive devastating news, it must come through the proper official channels after all identification procedures are completed,” it said in a statement late Wednesday.
Israeli authorities have not formally named any of those who would be returned, but Netanyahu’s administration announced on Wednesday that it had received a list of captives whose remains will be handed over and that their relatives had been notified.
The National Forensic Medicine Institute in Tel Aviv has dispatched ten doctors to speed up the identification process, national television Kan reported on Wednesday.
Israel and Hamas reached an agreement earlier this week to return the remains of eight prisoners in two groups this week and next, as well as release six living Israeli captives on Saturday.
The hostages’ forum identified the six as Eliya Cohen, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, Hisham al-Sayed, and Avera Mengistu.
The ceasefire in Gaza has been maintained despite charges of violations on both sides.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Tuesday that talks on the second phase, which is likely to lay down a more permanent conclusion to the war, would begin “this week.”.
Taher al-Nunu, a senior Hamas official, told AFP on Wednesday that Hamas was ready to release all remaining hostages in Gaza in a single trade during phase two.
He did not say how many hostages were currently held by Hamas or other extremist groups.
During the attack, Hamas and its allies kidnapped 251 people, 70 of whom are still in Gaza, with the Israeli military claiming 35 are dead.
According to an AFP assessment of Israeli official estimates, the attack killed 1,211 individuals, the majority of whom were civilians.
Israel’s retaliatory bombardment has killed at least 48,297 people in Gaza; the bulk of them are civilians, according to estimates from the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave that the UN considers credible.
