WEB DESK: Israel’s Bibas family has confirmed that the remains of Shiri Bibas have been returned by Hamas, a day after it announced that the Palestinian group had returned an unidentified body.
On Friday, Hamas released the remains of Bibas, whose misidentification in a handover earlier prompted anger in the Israeli government and threatened to derail the fragile Gaza ceasefire deal.
“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 published on Saturday.
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 captive on Thursday under a ceasefire that has halted fighting in Gaza since last month.
Late on Thursday, Israel accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire by handing over an unidentified body instead of the remains of hostage Shiri Bibas that were due to be returned along with the bodies of her two small sons.
Hamas said, her remains appear to have been mixed up with other human remains recovered from the rubble after an Israeli air strike that it said killed her and her two sons in November 2023. On Friday, the group handed over another body, which Israeli forensic officials were preparing to investigate to confirm the identity.
The Bibas family, kidnapped along with their father in the October 7 attack, has been an emblem of the trauma suffered by Israel on that day and the misidentification of the remains of Shiri Bibas, as well as the staged handover of their coffins by Hamas outraged Israelis.
