Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has condemned Hamas after the Israeli military said one of the bodies released by the militant group did not belong to Shiri Bibas or any of the captives held in Gaza, accusing it of violating the ceasefire.
“The cruelty of the Hamas monsters knows no bounds,” he said in video statement.
Netanyahu added that his government will “ensure Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement”.
The PM promised that he will work to bring home “all our hostages – both living and dead”.The Israeli military said on Feb 21 that one of the bodies released by Hamas did not belong to any of the hostages held in Gaza, accusing Hamas of violating an already shaking ceasefire.
Two of the bodies were identified as infant Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel, while a third body that was supposed to be their mother, Ms Shiri, was found not to match with any hostage and remained unidentified, the military said.
“This is a violation of utmost severity by the Hamas terrorist organisation, which is obliged under the agreement to return four deceased hostages,” the military said in a statement, demanding the return of Ms Shiri and all hostages.
The family of hostage Oded Lifshitz said in a statement that his body had been formally identified.
Hamas says Shiri Bibas remains appear to have been mixed with other human remains in rubble after Israeli air strike- Hamas official, according to the Reuters news agency
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier vowed revenge on Hamas after the group released the remains of what it said were four hostages, including that of Kfir and Ariel, the youngest of those abducted during the Oct 7, 2023 attack.
Palestinian militants handed over four black coffins in a carefully orchestrated public display as a crowd of Palestinians and dozens of armed Hamas militants watched, creating a spectacle which was condemned by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
The purported remains of the boys, their mother and Mr Lifshitz, were handed over under the Gaza ceasefire agreement reached in January with the backing of the United States and the mediation of Qatar and Egypt.
Israelis lined the road in the rain near the Gaza border to pay their respects as the convoy carrying the coffins drove by.
“We stand here together, with a broken heart. The sky is also crying with us and we pray to see better days,” said one woman, who gave her name only as Efrat.
In Tel Aviv, people gathered, some weeping, in a public square opposite Israel’s defence headquarters that has come to be known as Hostages Square.
“Agony. Pain. There are no words. Our hearts – the hearts of an entire nation – lie in tatters,” said President Isaac Herzog.
In a recorded address released after the remains of the hostages were handed over, Mr Netanyahu vowed to eliminate Hamas, saying “the four coffins” obliged Israel to ensure “more than ever” that there was no repeat of the Oct 7 attack.
“Our loved ones’ blood is shouting at us from the soil and is obliging us to settle the score with the despicable murderers, and we will,” he said.
Over the course of the 16-month-old conflict, Israeli officials have repeatedly asserted that Hamas would be destroyed and the roughly 250 hostages abducted during the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel would be returned home.
During Feb 20’s handover, one militant stood beside a poster showing coffins wrapped in Israeli flags. It read: “The Return of the War = The Return of your Prisoners in Coffins”.
UN chief Mr Guterres condemned “the parading of bodies and displaying of the coffins of the deceased hostages in the manner seen this morning, which is abhorrent and appalling,” his spokesman, Mr Stephane Dujarric, said.
He said international law required remains to be handed over in a way that ensures “respect for the dignity of the deceased and their families”.
‘Symbol’
Kfir Bibas was nine months old when the Bibas family, including their father Mr Yarden, was abducted at Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of a string of communities near Gaza that were overrun by Hamas-led attackers from Gaza.
Hamas said in November 2023 that the boys and their mother had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, but their deaths were not confirmed by Israeli authorities.
“Shiri and the kids became a symbol,” said Mr Yiftach Cohen, of the Nir Oz kibbutz, which lost around a quarter of its residents, either killed or kidnapped, during the assault.
Mr Yarden Bibas was returned alive in an exchange for prisoners in February.
Mr Lifshitz was 83 when he was abducted from Nir Oz, the kibbutz he helped found. His wife, Ms Yocheved, 85 at the time, was seized with him and released two weeks later, along with another woman.
He was a former journalist and in an op-ed in left-leaning Haaretz in January 2019, he listed what he said were Mr Netanyahu’s policy failures.
The handover marked the first return of dead bodies during the current agreement.
The military said that the Bibas children had been murdered in captivity in November 2023 by “terrorists”.
The prime minister’s office earlier said that Mr Lifshitz was murdered in captivity by Islamic Jihad, another militant group in Gaza.
Mr Chen Kugel, the head of the Israel National Centre of Forensic Medicine, later said in a televised statement that Mr Lifshitz had been murdered more than a year ago.
The Hamas-led attack into Israel killed some 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies, with 251 kidnapped. Israel’s subsequent military campaign has killed some 48,000 people, Palestinian health authorities say, and left densely populated Gaza in ruins.
The Feb 20 handover of bodies will be followed by the return of six living hostages on Feb 22, in exchange for hundreds more Palestinians, expected to be women and minors detained by Israeli forces in Gaza during the war.
Negotiations for a second phase, expected to cover the return of around 60 remaining hostages, less than half of whom are believed to be alive, and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip to allow an end to the war, are expected to begin in the coming days.
Via Reuters