Middle East Tensions
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Hamas said it handed over four hostages to Israel in a display a senior U.N. official called “abhorrent and cruel.” Israel later said only three bodies belonged to captives.
By Aaron Boxerman and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad
Aaron Boxerman reported from Jerusalem, and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad from Haifa, Israel.
Hamas handed over on Thursday what it said were the remains of four Israelis taken hostage during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, including two young children whose abduction was widely seen as emblematic of the viciousness of the Hamas assault.
But early on Friday morning, the Israeli military said that only three of the bodies belonged to the hostages slated to be handed over. They were Oded Lifshitz, 83, a retiree and a peace activist; Ariel Bibas, 4; and Kfir Bibas, 10 months old; according to Israeli officials.
The fourth body was supposed to be the children’s mother, Shiri Bibas. But Israeli forensic testing found it did not belong to her, the Israeli military said, describing it as a “violation of the utmost severity” of the ongoing cease-fire.
The shocking claim, sure to set off widespread anger and revulsion across Israel when the country wakes up to the news, threw the truce’s next steps into doubt after an already tense day that had ignited a torrent of emotion in the country.
Hamas said the four hostages were killed by Israeli airstrikes. The Israeli authorities said the two Bibas children were “brutally murdered by terrorists,” and that Mr. Lifshitz had been “murdered in the captivity of Palestinian Islamic Jihad” without providing further details. Neither claim could be immediately verified.
Crowds of Palestinians had gathered near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis to watch the theatrical handoff staged by Hamas that morning: Four coffins placed on a stage in front of a cartoonish, vampiric picture of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. Triumphant music thumped in the background.
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