TEL AVIV: Group on Thursday handed over the bodies of four hostages taken into Gaza during their October 7, 2023 attack, with Hamas saying they include the Bibas family — symbols of Israel’s ordeal since the Gaza war began.
This is the first release of dead hostages under a fragile ceasefire which has so far seen only living captives exchanged for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
The ceremony to return the bodies of Shiri Bibas, her two young red-headed boys — Kfir and Ariel — and a fourth captive, Oded Lifshitz, 83 at the time of his capture, took place at a former cemetery in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis.
Israel has “received the caskets of four fallen hostages”, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.
“Our hearts — the hearts of the entire nation — lie in tatters,” President Isaac Herzog said in a statement after the handover. He asked “forgiveness for not protecting you”.
Flag-waving Israelis lined the route which a convoy carrying the bodies took from southern Israel to Tel Aviv following the transfer via the Red Cross.
Among those waiting at “Hostages Square” in Tel Aviv was museum manager Tania Coen Uzzielli, 59.
“This is one of the hardest days, I think, since October 7th,” she said, adding that “maybe we didn’t do enough to prevent this tragedy.”
Israel’s military said the bodies would “undergo an identification procedure” at the city’s national forensic medicine institute, where onlookers wept as the convoy arrived.
Ahead of the handover, Hamas and members of other armed Palestinian groups displayed four black coffins on a stage erected on the sandy patch of ground. A banner behind them depicted Netanyahu as a blood-stained vampire.
Each casket bore a small photo of the deceased. White mock-up missiles nearby carried the message: “They were killed by USA bombs,” a reference to Israel’s top military supplier. Under a cold drizzle, a group with his face wrapped in a red and white keffiyeh scarf sat on the stage to complete documents with a Red Cross official.
The coffins were loaded into Red Cross vehicles.
Tahani Fayad, 40, was among the hundreds of people gathered to witness the ceremony which he called “a confirmation of the victory of the Palestinian people and proof that the occupation will not defeat us”.
Buildings bombed during more than 15 months of war surrounded the site.
Armed men in military fatigues and wearing Hamas headbands were ubiquitous at the ceremony — carefully choreographed as in previous hostage transfers.
During their attack that triggered the Gaza war, Hamas filmed and later broadcast footage showing the Bibas family’s abduction from their home near the Gaza border.
Ariel was then aged four. Kfir was the youngest hostage at just nine months old. Yarden Bibas, the boys’ father and Shiri’s husband, was abducted separately and released in a previous hostage-prisoner swap on February 1.
The bodies’ repatriation is part of the six-week initial phase of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which took effect on January 19.
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