Kibbutz confirms death of Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas after Hamas ‘mix-up’ with remains

An Israeli kibbutz confirmed the death of Shiri Bibas, as Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to make Hamas pay for a ‘mix-up’ that resulted in the wrong remains being returned.

Posters bearing the portraits of Israeli hostages Shiri Bibas and her two children Ariel and Kfir set up on a square outside Tel Aviv Museum of Art, on January 21. Picture: AFP

Israel’s Bibas family announced on Saturday that remains returned to Israel the day before were identified to be of hostage Shiri Bibas, taken captive by Palestinian militants in October 2023.

The Israeli kibbutz community of Nir Oz had earlier Saturday announced Bibas’s death, after the International Committee of the Red Cross said it had transferred more human remains to Israeli authorities without saying whose they were.

“After the identification process at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, this morning we received the news we feared the most. Our Shiri was murdered in captivity and has now returned home to her sons, husband, sister, and all her family to rest,” the Bibas family said in a statement.

“Despite our fears for their fate, we kept hoping we would get to hug them again, and now we are broken and grieving.

“For 16 months, we sought certainty, and now that we have it, there is no comfort in it, but we hope for the beginning of a closure,” the family said in a statement on Instagram.

On Thursday, Hamas handed over four bodies, saying they were of Shiri Bibas, her two young son, and an elderly hostage.

While the remains of her two sons and the elderly hostage were identified positively, Israeli authorities said the fourth body was not that of Shiri Bibas, sparking anger and grief across the country.

But on Friday, Hamas — which blamed a possible “mix-up” of bodies — handed over new remains to the Red Cross, which now have been identified to be that of Shiri Bibas.

Hamas has long maintained an Israeli air strike killed Bibas and her boys — Kfir and Ariel — early in the war.

The Bibas family became symbols of the hostage ordeal suffered by Israel since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza.

Netanyahu says Hamas will pay after ‘mix-up’

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas on Friday of murdering the two Israeli children in Gaza and said the militants would pay for failing to return Bibas initially.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said after an analysis of the remains that Palestinian militants had killed the Bibas boys “with their bare hands”, while Hamas has long maintained an Israeli air strike killed them and their mother early in the war.

Relatives of the Bibas family, however, suggested Benjamin Netanyahu was also accountable for the deaths, saying he would receive “no forgiveness” for abandoning the mother and her children during their ordeal.

More than 15 months of war have left much of Gaza in ruins after Palestinian militants attacked Israel and seized 251 hostages on October 7, 2023. Sixty-seven hostages remain in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military has said are dead.

Israeli soldiers carry the coffins of deceased hostages Oded Lifschitz, Kfir and Ariel Bibas and what was purportedly Shiri Bibas. Picture: Government Press Office / GPO

Despite the tensions over Thursday’s handover of remains, the next swap of live hostages for Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons was still expected to go ahead Saturday under an ongoing truce deal.

Killed with ‘bare hands’

“Who kidnaps a little boy and a baby and murders them? Monsters. That’s who,” Netanyahu said. “I vow that I will not rest until the savages who executed our hostages are brought to justice.”

In Jerusalem, musician David Shemer, 72, said he hoped Israeli would not retaliate.

“There are voices about totally destroying Gaza and all this. For me, it’s not only inappropriate, it’s immoral,” he said. “Revenge is a very human impulse, but it is useless.”

Hamas also handed over a fourth body on Thursday, that of Oded Lifshitz, a veteran journalist and long-time defender of Palestinian rights who was aged 83 at the time of his capture.

The repatriations were part of the first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which took effect on January 19 and is to expire in early March.

The deal has so far led to the release of 19 living Israeli hostages in exchange for more than 1100 Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas’s armed wing confirmed it would release six Israelis on Saturday in the seventh swap of the ceasefire.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said Israel would free 602 inmates in return. Most were arrested after the October 7 attack, it said.

Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum has published the names of the six Israelis to be freed – Eliya Cohen, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, Hisham al-Sayed and Avera Mengistu.

Sayed and Mengistu have been held in Gaza for around a decade.

West Bank operation

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has said talks will begin this week on the truce’s second phase, aiming to lay out a more permanent end to the war.

A Hamas spokesman accused Netanyahu on Thursday of “procrastinating” on phase two, saying the group was “ready to engage” in negotiations.

Alongside the Gaza war, violence has surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Netanyahu ordered an “intensive operation against centres of terrorism” in the West Bank before visiting troops operating in Tulkarem refugee camp on Friday, his office said.

His order came after bombs exploded on three buses in central Israel without causing any injuries.

Hamas’s 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1214 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,319 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.