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The Palestinian armed group said it had handed over the body of Shiri Bibas along with her two young children and another man. Israel said forensic testing found the remains were not hers.
Feb. 21, 2025Updated 10:51 a.m. ET
Israel said on Friday that one of the bodies Hamas handed over as part of the cease-fire deal did not belong to an Israeli woman taken hostage in 2023, as the Palestinian militant group had claimed.
The revelation prompted further alarm over the future of the brittle truce and hostage-for-prisoner swap deal between Hamas and Israel. Hamas acknowledged there may have been a mix-up.
Here’s what we know so far.
Who were the hostages?
Hamas said on Thursday that it had handed over the remains of four hostages: Shiri Bibas, 32; her two children, Ariel, 4, and Kfir Bibas, less than a year old; and Oded Lifshitz, 83. All four were kidnapped from Nir Oz, a village near Gaza that was devastated in Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
For many Israelis, the Bibas family had become emblematic of the brutality of the Hamas attack. Footage of a terrified Ms. Bibas clutching her two children while being led away by Palestinian gunmen has been seared into the Israeli public consciousness.
Hamas asserted that all four hostages were killed in Israeli airstrikes. But Israel said that three of the four returned on Thursday — which were identified through DNA testing as belonging to Mr. Lifshitz and the two Bibas children — had been murdered by their captors.
Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said the Bibas children’s captors had killed them “with their bare hands.” He said Israel had shared the forensic and intelligence findings with its allies.
