Red Cross vehicles arrive at Gaza site where Hamas is to hand over remains of 4 hostages

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hamas is set to return the bodies of four Israeli hostages on Thursday, including a mother and her two children who have long been feared dead and had come to embody the nation’s agony following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

The remains to be released from the Gaza Strip are of Shiri Bibas and her two children, Ariel and Kfir. Kfir was the youngest captive taken that day. Hamas has said all three were killed in an Israeli airstrike early in the war. The militant group also plans to release the body of Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 when he was abducted.

“The heart of an entire nation breaks,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday in anticipation of the bodies being returned to Israel.

Thousands of people, including large numbers of masked and armed fighters from Hamas and other factions, gathered at the handover site on the outskirts of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, where large banners had been set up, including one showing an image of coffins draped in Israeli flags.

There were no plans to broadcast the handover live in Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, where Israelis have gathered to watch the release of living hostages. The square was empty as it rained on and off in both locations, which are about 100 kilometers (60 miles) apart.

Israelis have celebrated the return of 24 living hostages in recent weeks under a tenuous ceasefire that paused over 15 months of war. But the handover on Thursday will provide a grim reminder of those who died in captivity as the talks leading up to the truce dragged on for over a year.

It could also provide impetus for negotiations on the second stage of the ceasefire that have hardly begun. The first phase is set to end at the beginning of March.

Infant was the youngest taken hostage

Kfir Bibas was just 9 months old, a red-headed infant with a toothless smile, when militants stormed into the family’s home on Oct. 7, 2023. His brother Ariel was 4. Video shot that day showed a terrified Shiri swaddling the two boys as militants led them into Gaza.

Her husband, Yarden Bibas, was taken separately and released this month after 16 months in captivity.

Relatives in Israel have clung to hope, marking Kfir’s first and second birthdays and his brother’s fifth. The Bibas family said in a statement Wednesday that it would wait for “identification procedures” before acknowledging that their loved ones were dead.

Supporters throughout Israel have worn orange in solidarity with the family — a reference to two boys’ red hair — and a popular children’s song was written in their honor.

Like the Bibas family, Oded Lifshitz was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, along with his wife Yocheved, who was freed during a weeklong ceasefire in November 2023. Oded was a journalist who campaigned for the recognition of Palestinian rights and peace between Arabs and Jews.

Hamas-led militants abducted 251 hostages, including some 30 children, in the Oct. 7 attack, in which they also killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

More than half the hostages, and most of the women and children, have been released in ceasefire agreements or other deals. Israeli forces have rescued eight and have recovered dozens of bodies of people killed in the initial attack or who died in captivity.

It’s not clear if the ceasefire will last

Hamas is set to free six living hostages on Saturday in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, and says it will release four more bodies next week, completing the ceasefire’s first phase. That will leave the militants with some 60 hostages, all men, around half of whom are believed to be dead.

Hamas has said it won’t release the remaining captives without a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal. Netanyahu, with the full backing of the Trump administration, says he is committed to destroying Hamas’ military and governing capacities and returning all the hostages, goals widely seen as mutually exclusive.

Trump’s proposal to remove some 2 million Palestinians from Gaza so the U.S. can own and rebuild it, which has been embraced by Israel but universally rejected by Palestinians and Arab countries, has thrown the ceasefire into further doubt.

Hamas could be reluctant to free more hostages if it believes the war will resume with the goal of annihilating the group or forcibly transferring Gaza’s population.

Israel’s military offensive killed over 48,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its records. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.

The offensive destroyed vast areas of Gaza, reducing entire neighborhoods to fields of rubble and bombed-out buildings. At its height, the war displaced 90% of Gaza’s population. Many have returned to their homes to find nothing left and no way of rebuilding.

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Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, and Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.

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Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Mohammad Jahjouh, Wafaa Shurafa And Melanie Lidman, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press