Israel said a body returned as part of a ceasefire agreement with Hamas was not that of a young mother taken hostage in October 2023, as the militant group had claimed.
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Shiri Bibas, 33 at the time, was abducted with her two sons – Ariel, 4, and Kfir, who at nine months was the youngest of the hostages. The two boys’ flame-red hair was used frequently in Israel as an emblem. Yarden Bibas, the father, was also taken captive and held separately before being freed on February 1.
The remains of the two boys were returned, the Israel Defence Forces said in a statement. “During the identification process, it was determined that the additional body received is not that of Shiri Bibas, and no match was found for any other hostage,” the IDF said in the statement posted on X Thursday night. “This is an anonymous, unidentified body.”
“Based on the intelligence available to us and forensic findings from the identification process, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were brutally murdered by terrorists in captivity in November 2023,” the IDF said, adding that “we demand that Hamas return Shiri home along with all our hostages”.
The family, along with Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 when kidnapped, were taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a tiny farming collective near Gaza which lost a quarter of its 400 inhabitants in the assault that triggered the war with Hamas.
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The statement did not refer to the remains of Lifshitz.