Hamas has released the bodies of four Israeli hostages, said to include a mother and her two children who have long been feared dead and had come to embody the nation’s agony following the October 7 2023 attack.
The remains were said to be of Shiri Bibas and her two children, Ariel and Kfir, as well as Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 when he was abducted.
Kfir, who was nine-months-old when he was taken, was the youngest captive. Hamas has said all four were killed along with their guards in Israeli airstrikes.
Israeli president Isaac Herzog said in a statement: “Our hearts — the hearts of an entire nation — lie in tatters.
“On behalf of the State of Israel, I bow my head and ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness for not protecting you on that terrible day. Forgiveness for not bringing you home safely.”
Meanwhile, the British Embassy in Israel posted on X, formerly Twitter: “For over 500 days we hoped for the safe return of all the hostages. This hope is broken, but we mustn’t give up on those still held hostage in Gaza.”
The militants displayed four black coffins on a stage in the Gaza Strip surrounded by banners, including a large one depicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a vampire. The fighters then carried the coffins over to Red Cross vehicles, where personnel in red vests covered them in white sheets before placing them inside.
The Red Cross convoy headed back to Israel, where the Israeli military confirmed it received the coffins and held a short funeral ceremony.
A military rabbi read a Kaddish prayer and chapters from the Book of Psalms, based on a request from the families. Troops fired ceremonial shots into the air.
Prior to the ceremony, the coffins were checked for explosives or dangerous substances.
After the prayers, the remains were transported to a laboratory in Israel where they will undergo DNA testing, which could take up to two days. Only then would there be an official confirmation of the deaths.
Thousands of people, including large numbers of masked and armed fighters from Hamas and other factions, gathered at the handover site on the outskirts of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
Israeli channels did not broadcast the handover. In Hostage Squares in Tel Aviv, where Israelis have gathered to watch the release of living hostages, a large screen showed a compilation of photos and videos of Mr Lifshitz and the Bibas family.
Dozens of residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz, where the four were kidnapped, gathered to wave Israeli flags outside of their temporary home an hour north of the kibbutz.
Israelis have celebrated the return of 24 living hostages in recent weeks under a tenuous ceasefire that paused over 15 months of war. But the handover on Thursday will provide a grim reminder of those who died in captivity as the talks leading up to the truce dragged on for over a year.
It could also provide impetus for negotiations on the second stage of the ceasefire that have hardly begun. The first phase is set to end at the beginning of March.
Kfir Bibas was nine-months-old when militants stormed into the family’s home on October 7 2023. His brother Ariel was four. Video shot that day showed a terrified Shiri swaddling the two boys as militants led them into Gaza.
Her husband, Yarden Bibas, was taken separately and released this month after 16 months in captivity.
Relatives in Israel have clung to hope, marking Kfir’s first and second birthdays and his brother’s fifth. The Bibas family said in a statement on Wednesday that they would wait for “identification procedures” before acknowledging that their loved ones were dead.
Like the Bibas family, Oded Lifshitz was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, along with his wife Yocheved, who was freed during a week-long ceasefire in November 2023. His family, including British daughter Dr Sharone Lifschitz, 53, had no information since the attack about whether he was still alive. Mr Lifshitz was a journalist who campaigned for the recognition of Palestinian rights and peace between Arabs and Jews.
Mr Lifshitz’s family later said his remains had been officially identified.
“We had hoped and prayed so much for a different outcome,” they said in a statement. “Now we can mourn the husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather who has been missing from us since October 7.”
Hamas-led militants abducted 251 hostages, including some 30 children, in the October 7 attack, in which they also killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
More than half the hostages, and most of the women and children, have been released in ceasefire agreements or other deals. Israeli forces have rescued eight and have recovered dozens of bodies of people killed in the initial attack or who died in captivity.
Hamas is set to free six living hostages on Saturday in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, and says it will release four more bodies next week, completing the ceasefire’s first phase. This will leave the militants with some 60 hostages, all men, around half of whom are believed to be dead.
Hamas has said it will not release the remaining captives without a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the full backing of the Trump administration in the US, says he is committed to destroying Hamas’s military and governing capacities and returning all the hostages, goals widely seen as mutually exclusive.
US president Donald Trump’s proposal to remove some two million Palestinians from Gaza so America can own and rebuild it, which has been welcomed by Mr Netanyahu but universally rejected by Palestinians and Arab countries, has thrown the ceasefire into further doubt.
Hamas could be reluctant to free more hostages if it believes the war will resume with the goal of annihilating the group or forcibly transferring Gaza’s population.
Israel’s military offensive killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its records. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The offensive destroyed vast areas of Gaza, reducing entire neighbourhoods to fields of rubble and bombed-out buildings. At its height, the war displaced 90% of Gaza’s population. Many have returned to their homes to find nothing left and no way of rebuilding.
