Two Tiny Captives, Symbols of Hostage Crisis, to Go Home Dead, Hamas Says

For more than a year, many Israelis and others around the world have anguished over the fates of a mother and her two young sons who were captured by gunmen and taken to Gaza during the Hamas-led assault of Oct. 7, 2023.

On Tuesday, hopes dissipated that the Israeli woman, Shiri Bibas, and her children would be returned alive when Hamas announced that it would hand over at least some of their bodies this week. Israeli officials later warned against disseminating “rumors” regarding the hostages without extensively commenting on Hamas’s statement.

For many Israelis, the kidnapping of Ms. Bibas, her husband, Yarden, and their redheaded children — Ariel, who was 4 at the time, and Kfir, then not even 9 months old — epitomized the cruelty of the Hamas-led attack that prompted the 15-month war in Gaza. The family’s capture became a rallying cry both for those who supported a deal to end the war and negotiate the hostages’ speedy release, and for those who believed Israel should continue fighting until Hamas was destroyed.

News that Hamas would turn over the bodies, part of a series of negotiated exchanges in this phase of a cease-fire agreement, followed the release of 19 living Israeli hostages in recent weeks. If those releases lifted spirits in Israel, the report of the children’s deaths left many in the country distraught.

Israel has not confirmed the deaths of the three Bibas family members, but the Israeli military said last month it was “gravely concerned” about them.

Israel is expected to release Palestinian prisoners and detainees in exchange for the bodies.

Mr. Bibas was abducted separately to Gaza. He was seen in video footage being driven away with a bleeding head wound. Ms. Bibas’s elderly parents were also killed in the Hamas-led attack.

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