Hamas to deliver the first bodies of hostages

Hamas will transfer to Israel the bodies of four hostages that have been retained in Gaza since he took alive in the attack of the group against Israel on October 7, 2023.

He has said that they include a mother and two children of the Bibas family, whose unknown destiny has grabbed Israel since then. The minor child, Kfir, was nine months old.

Hamas says that the fourth body is that of Oded Lifshitz, 84, a veteran peace activist.

It will mark the first time that the group will have delivered dead hostages since the stop the fire last month.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “the heart of the entire nation is torn,” and added that Israel was dealing with “monsters.”

Six live hostages will be released on Saturday.

The news, although not confirmed by the Israeli government, that Shiri Bibas, 33, and their children (who were now five and two years old) are dead, triggered a wave of pain throughout the country. The Government says that it will only confirm the names of the dead after forensic exams.

In a statement, the Bibas family in Israel said it was “in agitation”, and added that “until we received a definitive confirmation, our trip is not over.”

It is not clear how the four bodies will be delivered, although the Red Cross, which has received the hostages thrown alive by Hamas, has requested a dignified delivery.

“We must be clear: any degrading treatment during launch operations is unacceptable,” he said in a statement on Wednesday night.

It follows a general complaint of the way in which Hamas has launched hostages in recent weeks in staged events in which they have been placed on platforms against multitudes of spectators before being delivered to the representatives of the Red Cross.

It is not known how Shiri, Kfir and his brother Ariel died, if confirmed. Hamas said in November 2023 that they had been killed in an Israeli air strike, without providing evidence. At that time, the then member of the Israel War Cabinet, Benny Gantz, said there was no confirmation of the claim.

The family was taken along with the father, Yarden, from Kibbutz Nir Oz when hundreds of Hamas armed men broke into the border with Israel and attacked communities, security forces sites and a music festival.

Some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the attack and another 251 taken back to Gaza as hostages. Israel launched a massive military campaign against Hamas in response, which has killed at least 48,297 Palestinians, mainly civil, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.

Yarden Bibas, 35, was released on February 1 along with two other hostages as part of an exchange for 183 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Oded Lifshitz, a retired journalist, was also taken from Nir Oz, along with this wife, and night. The eighty -five -year -old woman was released by Hamas two weeks later.

Oded Lifshitz had been retained by the Palestinian Group Armed Islamic Jihad since October 7, 2023.

The launch of the hostage agencies was agreed as part of the high fire agreement that entered into force on January 19. Israel has confirmed that there will be eight.

The two parties agreed to exchange 33 hostages for about 1,900 prisoners at the end of the first six weeks of the fire.

The conversations about progress to the next phase of the agreement, by virtue of which the remaining hostages would be released and the war would end permanently, had to begin earlier this month, but they had not yet begun.

Twenty -four hostages and more than 1,000 prisoners have been exchanged so far.

Seventy hostages taken on October 7 are still in Gaza. Three other hostages, taken more than a decade ago, are also detained. It is believed that approximately half of all hostages that are still in Gaza are alive.