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Hamas said on Thursday it had handed over the remains of four Israeli hostages, including an infant, in a grim exchange that signalled progress under a shaky ceasefire agreement.
The Israeli military will take time to confirm the identities of the deceased, but Hamas said they were brothers — Kfir, an infant, and Ariel, 4 at the time they were taken hostage — and their mother Shiri Bibas, 32, as well as 83-year old peace activist Oded Lifschitz.
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed that four caskets of deceased hostages had been transferred to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza. Israel will release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange as required by the ceasefire agreement.
Hamas has pledged to release six living hostages ahead of schedule on Saturday, in hopes of buttressing negotiations aimed at converting the temporary ceasefire into a lasting truce. Dozens of hostages, alive and dead, remain in captivity in Gaza.
The capture of the Bibas family — whose father was released alive on February 1 in the first stage of swaps — had become a particularly vivid demonstration of Hamas’s brutality in the October 7 2023 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
In a propaganda video released by Hamas, Shiri carried the children in her arms as armed fighters seized them from the Nir Oz kibbutz. Pictures of the children have become ubiquitous on Israeli posters demanding the release of hostages.
Lifschitz and his wife, 86-year old Yocheved, were also taken from their homes near the Bibas family. Yocheved was released by Hamas just 16 days into the war.
The circumstances around the Bibas’s deaths remain uncertain. Hamas has claimed since late 2023 that they were killed in an Israeli air strike, without providing evidence.
The militant group repeated that assertion on Thursday, handing over the bodies to the Red Cross under a sign that blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “missiles and Zionist warplanes” for their deaths.
The IDF has not commented on the case, but a handful of families have been informed that their loved ones may have been killed inadvertently by its bombardment of Gaza, according to interviews in Israeli media.
“A wrenching day, a day of grief,” Netanyahu said on Wednesday night. “We are bringing home four of our beloved hostages, deceased.”
Officials in Gaza estimate that about 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed by the Israeli assault, which has destroyed most of the besieged enclave. About 1,200 people were killed in Israel in Hamas’s cross-border raid and some 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
The release on Thursday was the first of deceased hostages and came in the fifth week of a six-week ceasefire agreed last month, under which Israel has released 985 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 19 living Israeli hostages, according to the Red Cross.
The vast majority of the Palestinians had been detained in Israel without trial, while dozens were serving life sentences after being convicted in military prisons for killing Israelis.
Israel’s military has allowed thousands of trucks with humanitarian aid into Gaza, including a small amount of heavy machinery, and mobile homes starting this week.
Negotiations between Israel and Hamas aimed at securing a lasting truce have continued in Cairo, mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the US. But a deal would require Israel to withdraw its army from Gaza and Hamas to release the remaining 60 or so hostages, many of whom are feared dead.
Netanyahu’s ruling coalition depends on the support of a far-right political party that is bitterly opposed to the ceasefire and has vowed to resume the assault on Hamas.
The militant group appeared to threaten the living hostages during Thursday’s handover, displaying a sign that read: “The Return of War = The Return of Your Prisoners in Coffins.”
Hamas is known to have executed at least six prisoners last year after suspecting an Israeli rescue operation in the tunnels where they were held.
The IDF said at the time no such operation was ongoing and that it had stumbled on the recently killed hostages on a regular patrol.
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