Hamas’ cruelty knows no bounds as the Bibas kids come home without their missing mother

It was the final indignity for the Bibas family; for a mother not to come home with her children, even in death.

Israeli soldiers salute the coffins of dead hostages after they were handed over by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip on Thursday.

It was the final indignity for the Bibas family; for a mother not to come home with her children, even in death.

In the cruellest of postscripts to a crime that has both crushed and inflamed Israelis, the body of Shiri Bibas, mother of the two tiny red-haired boys, Kfir and Ariel, was not returned to Israel as Hamas had claimed.

Instead, an unknown body was dumped in her casket by Hamas, while the mutilated bodies of her sons, aged just nine months and four when they were kidnapped, were returned home from Gaza.

Israelis woke to this grim news only hours after three devices exploded on buses in the centre of the country in what security services say was a planned mass bombing attempt orchestrated by Iran.

There were no injuries or deaths, but one of the bombs exploded just minutes after the bus had pulled into a bus station in the central city of Bat Yam. Passengers had left the bus when one of them spotted an unattended bag. The attack, which could have killed dozens if the explosions had occurred during the day, was reportedly carried out by trained militants from the West Bank using explosive devices funded by Iran.

The attack came after forensic tests were carried out on four bodies Hamas had returned to Israel in a ghoulish ceremony a day earlier. The Israel Defence Forces said the tests revealed one of the bodies was “not that of (the Bibas boys’) mother, Shiri, nor that of any other Israeli hostage”.

Yarden and Shiri Bibas with their sons, Kfir and Ariel.

It also said forensic evidence and intelligence led to an assessment that the two young boys were “brutally murdered” by Hamas in Gaza in November 2023, when the terrorist group claimed the family had been killed in an Israeli attack.

“We share the deep sorrow of the Bibas family at this difficult time and will continue to make every effort to return Shiri and all the hostages home as soon as possible,” the IDF said.

A military spokesman said: “We demand Hamas return Shiri Bibas along with all the abductees”, adding that the ruse was a “violation of utmost severity” of Hamas’s ceasefire agreement with Israel.

The news of his wife’s missing body was the latest heartbreak for Yarden Bibas, the father of the two boys and a former hostage who was released by Hamas earlier this month, and who, until this week, had been clinging to the hope that his wife and sons were still alive.

The news came on the eve of the promised release of six living Israeli hostages aged 22 to 39, on Saturday local time, the last of the 25 living hostages to be released under the first stage of the ceasefire agreement.

There are growing doubts about the second stage of the ceasefire deal going ahead because of Hamas’s cruel and ghoulish behaviour in returning both living and dead hostages.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Hamas as “monsters”, saying his country was “enraged” after the militant group prominently displayed four black coffins with photos on them in front of a backdrop that portrayed Mr Netanyahu as Dracula above photos of the Bibas family and the fourth hostage victim, 83-year-old Oded Lifshitz.

It has since emerged that Hamas planted propaganda material inside each of the coffins, which was only discovered after they had been returned to Israel.

Meanwhile, Mr Netanyahu has instructed the military to embark on a major operation in the West Bank to catch those responsible for the plot to plant explosive devices on the three buses.

Israeli police inspect the wrecked buses in Bat Yam, central Israel, on Thursday. Picture: AP

Iran was suspected of being behind the plot amid reports the Shin Bet intelligence agency had recently identified Iranian involvement in supplying weapons and training for assembling explosive devices, as well as transferring large amounts of money to the area.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said he had instructed the IDF to sharply escalate its operations in the West Bank amid concerns more attacks might be planned.

“In light of the severe terror attack attempts (in the Tel Aviv area) by Palestinian terror organisations against the civilian population in Israel, I instructed the IDF to increase the intensity of the counter-terrorism activity in the Tulkarem refugee camp, and all the refugee camps in Judea and Samaria,” he said.

“We will hunt down the terrorists to the bitter end and destroy the terror infrastructure in the camps used as frontline posts of the Iranian evil axis.”

Tel Aviv district police chief Haim Sargarof said the identical devices had timers and were believed to be set to detonate simultaneously during Friday’s morning peak hour.