Nepal’s interim prime minister on Monday draped a national flag over the coffin of returned Gaza hostage Bipin Joshi, released under the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
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“Bipin is a son of all Nepali mothers,” Sushila Karki said at a ceremony held at the airport in Kathmandu, after his body was flown back to the capital from Tel Aviv.
“The name Bipin will be immortal, no one can forget him for his bravery and the hardships he had to face.”
Joshi, an agriculture student who was 22 when kidnapped, had arrived in Israel just weeks before Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, during which Palestinian militants took 251 hostages to Gaza.
He was taken from a kibbutz in southern Israel, where 10 Nepali nationals were killed.
Joshi was reported to have saved his friends by throwing a grenade back at the assailants storming the community, according to a survivor.
The family’s only sign of life from Joshi was a short video clip, believed to have been filmed in November 2023, and later recovered by the Israeli military.