Hamas is preparing to return the bodies of four Israeli hostages today, including Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, who have long been feared dead and had come to embody Israel’s agony following the October 7 attack.Â
At just nine months old, Kfir was the youngest captive taken that day. He was taken alongside his mother Shiri, and then-four-year-old brother Ariel.
Shiri’s husband, Yarden Bibas, was taken separately and released this month after 16 months in captivity, having been told by Hamas that his wife and children were dead.
Hamas has said that all three were killed in an Israeli airstrike early in the war. Their deaths were confirmed by The Hostages and Missing Families Forum last night.
Hamas also plans to release the body of Oded Lifshitz, a retired journalist who was aged 83 when he was taken from his home in Nir Oz, will be released today.
‘The heart of an entire nation breaks,’ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday in anticipation of the bodies being returned to Israel.
Thousands of people, including large numbers of masked and armed fighters from Hamas and other factions, gathered at the handover site on the outskirts of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, where large banners had been set up, including one showing an image of coffins draped in Israeli flags.
There were no plans to broadcast the handover live in Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, where Israelis have gathered to watch the release of living hostages. The square was empty as it rained on and off in both locations, which are about 60 miles apart.
The Bibas family – father Yarden, mother Shiri, baby Kfir and four-year-old Ariel – were taken captive by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023 from the Nir Oz kibbutz
This undated photo provided by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum shows Israeli hostage Oded Lifshitz who was abducted and brought to Gaza on October 7, 2023
Thousands of people, including large numbers of masked and armed fighters from Hamas and other factions, have gathered at the handover site
Members of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, stand guard as they await the handover
Thousands of people, including civilians and large numbers of masked and armed fighters from Hamas and other factions, gathered at the site, where large banners had been set up
Israelis have celebrated the return of 24 living hostages in recent weeks under a shaky ceasefire that paused over 15 months of war.Â
But the handover on Thursday will provide a grim reminder of those who died in captivity as the talks leading up to the truce dragged on for over a year.
It could also provide impetus for negotiations on the second stage of the ceasefire that have hardly begun. The first phase is set to end at the beginning of March.
Kfir Bibas was just nine months old, a red-headed infant with a toothless smile, when terrorists stormed into the family’s home on October 7, 2023.Â
His brother Ariel was four. Video shot that day showed a terrified Shiri swaddling the two boys as militants led them into Gaza.
Relatives in Israel have clung to hope, marking Kfir’s first and second birthdays and his brother’s fifth. The Bibas family said in a statement Wednesday that it would wait for ‘identification procedures’ before acknowledging that their loved ones were dead.
Supporters throughout Israel have worn orange in solidarity with the family – a reference to two boys’ red hair – and a popular children’s song was written in their honor.
Shiri Bibas, 32, appears distraught as she clutches both of her young sons during their abduction by Hamas on October 7, 2023
Like the Bibas family, Oded Lifshitz was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, along with his wife Yocheved, who was freed during a weeklong ceasefire in November 2023.Â
Oded was a journalist who campaigned for the recognition of Palestinian rights and peace between Arabs and Jews.
Hamas-led militants abducted 251 hostages, including some 30 children, in the Oct. 7 attack, in which they also killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
More than half the hostages, and most of the women and children, have been released in ceasefire agreements or other deals. Israeli forces have rescued eight and have recovered dozens of bodies of people killed in the initial attack or who died in captivity.
Hamas is set to free six living hostages on Saturday in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, and says it will release four more bodies next week, completing the ceasefire’s first phase.Â
That will leave the militants with some 60 hostages, all men, around half of whom are believed to be dead.
Hamas has said it won’t release the remaining captives without a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal.Â
Netanyahu, with the full backing of the Trump administration, says he is committed to destroying Hamas’ military and governing capacities and returning all the hostages, goals widely seen as mutually exclusive.
A group representing the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7 has tragically confirmed that Kfir Bibas is dead
Ariel Bibas was four when he was kidnapped by Hamas during the October 7, 2023 attack
Yarden Bibas is pictured together with his sister and father aboard a military helicopter on their way to Sheba hospital in Ramat Gan on February 1, 2025
Shiri Bibas holding her son Kfir. The pair, and her other son Ariel, have been confirmed dead
Trump’s proposal to remove some two million Palestinians from Gaza so the US can own and rebuild it, which has been embraced by Israel but universally rejected by Palestinians and Arab countries, has thrown the ceasefire into further doubt.
Hamas could be reluctant to free more hostages if it believes the war will resume with the goal of annihilating the group or forcibly transferring Gaza’s population.
Israel’s military offensive killed over 48,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its records.Â
Israel says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The offensive destroyed vast areas of Gaza, reducing entire neighborhoods to fields of rubble and bombed-out buildings.Â
At its height, the war displaced 90 per cent of Gaza’s population. Many have returned to their homes to find nothing left and no way of rebuilding.
