Israel Prepares to Receive Bodies of Youngest Gaza Hostages, Coffins Placed On Stage

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - On Thursday 20 February 2025, Israel braced for the return of the bodies of infant Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel, the two youngest captives taken by Hamas in their 7 October 2023 attack and among the most potent symbols of the trauma inflicted that day.

Red Cross vehicles arrived at the handover site, where four black coffins were placed on a stage.

Palestinian militant groups said the bodies of the two boys and their mother Shiri Bibas, along with that of a fourth hostage, Oded Lifschitz, would be handed over on Thursday under the Gaza ceasefire agreement reached last month with the backing of the United States and the mediation of Qatar and Egypt.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a brief video statement that Thursday would be "a very difficult day for the state of Israel. An upsetting day, a day of grief."

Hundreds of people gathered in the winter cold ahead of the handover at Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Armed Hamas militants in black and camouflage uniforms toured the area.

One militant stood beside a poster of a man standing over coffins wrapped in Israeli flags. Instead of legs he had tree roots in the ground, suggesting the land belongs to Palestinians. The poster read "The Return of the War=The Return of your Prisoners in Coffins".

Kfir Bibas was nine months old when the Bibas family, including their father Yarden, was abducted at Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of a string of communities near Gaza that were overrun by Hamas-led attackers from Gaza on 7 October 2023.

Hamas said in November 2023 that the boys and their mother had been killed in an Israeli airstrike but their deaths were never confirmed by Israeli authorities and even at the last minute, some refused to accept they were dead.

"Shiri and the kids became a symbol," said Yiftach Cohen, a resident of Nir Oz, which lost around a quarter of its inhabitants, either killed or kidnapped, during the 7 October assault. "I still hope that they will be alive."

Yarden Bibas was returned in an earlier exchange of hostages for prisoners this month. But the family said this week their "journey is not over" until they received final confirmation of what happened to the boys and their mother.

"We wake up to a difficult morning for all of us. A morning that sharpens the cruelty of our enemies and the justice of our determined war against them until they are destroyed from the face of the earth," Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a post on the X social media platform.

At the handover site, a large poster was hung up, depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a vampire standing over images of the four hostages. "The War Criminal Netanyahu & His Nazi Army Killed Them with Missiles from Zionist Warplanes," the poster read.

The handover will be the first return of dead bodies during the current agreement and Israel is not expected to confirm their identities until full DNA checks have been completed.

Despite accusations on both sides of ceasefire breaches, the fragile agreement that took effect on 19 January 2025 has held up since the first in a series of exchanges of hostages in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners and detainees held by Israel.

Netanyahu has faced criticism from his far-right coalition allies for agreeing to the deal, which some in Israel feel rewards Hamas and leaves the militant group in place in Gaza.

But successive surveys have shown broad support among the public for the ceasefire, and thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to demand the government stick to the deal until all the remaining hostages are returned.

Israel launched its war in the Gaza Strip after the Hamas-led attack that killed some 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies, with 251 kidnapped. The Israeli military campaign has killed some 48,000 people, Palestinian health authorities say, and left densely populated Gaza largely in ruins.

Living hostages

Thursday's handover of bodies will be followed by the return of six living hostages on Saturday 22 February 2025, in exchange for hundreds more Palestinians, expected to be women and minors detained by Israeli forces in Gaza during the war.

Under the ceasefire deal, Hamas agreed to release 33 hostages in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in the first phase of an agreement intended to open the way towards ending the war in Gaza.

So far nineteen Israeli hostages have been released, as well as five Thais who were returned in an unscheduled handover.

Negotiations for a second phase, expected to cover the return of around 60 remaining hostages, less than half of whom are believed to be alive, and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip to allow an end to the war, are expected to begin in the coming days.

Prospects for an agreement remain uncertain, however, with both sides far apart on issues including the future governance of Gaza, which Israel has said cannot be run by either Hamas or the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

The issue has also been clouded by US President Donald Trump's call for Palestinians to be resettled outside Gaza, a move critics say would amount to a war crime and ethnic cleansing, and for the enclave to be developed as a waterfront property under US control.