Hamas Releases New Body Claimed To Be Shiri Bibas, Israel Begins Verification
Palestinian group Hamas released a body on Friday it claimed was that of Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas, whose misidentification during a handover earlier this week sparked outrage and threatened to derail a fragile ceasefire in Gaza. According to Israeli medical authorities, forensic experts will examine the body—transferred via the Red Cross—to determine if it is indeed Bibas’s.
Hamas had agreed to hand over the bodies of Bibas and her two young sons, Kfir and Ariel, along with the remains of a fourth hostage, under the ceasefire that has paused fighting since last month. On Thursday, four coffins were delivered and confirmed to contain the remains of the Bibas boys and Oded Lifshitz, an 84-year-old Israeli hostage. However, specialists determined that the fourth coffin did not contain Shiri Bibas’s remains but rather those of an unidentified woman.
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A Hamas official, Basem Naim, called this an “unfortunate mistake,” attributing it to the confusion caused by Israeli airstrikes and debris in Gaza. “We confirm that it is not in our values or our interest to keep any bodies,” he said in a statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sharply condemned the handover, calling it a “cruel and evil violation of the agreement” and vowing retaliation. “We will act with determination to bring Shiri home along with all our hostages—both living and dead,” he said in a video statement.
Hamas maintains that Shiri and her children were killed in an Israeli airstrike; however, the Israeli Defense Forces state that this isn’t true. According to the IDF’s chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari, forensic analysis shows the children were deliberately killed by Hamas terrorists “with their bare hands.” No further details were provided.
