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Hamas said it will release the hostage Yarden Bibas, 35, on Saturday. His wife and children were also taken captive on Oct. 7, 2023, but may not have survived.
Jan. 31, 2025Updated 12:24 p.m. ET
They became a potent symbol of Israel’s hostage crisis after video from the Hamas-led 2023 attack showed Palestinian militants leading away a distraught mother clutching her two small red-haired sons. Another video showed the father of the same family being spirited away to Gaza on a motorcycle, his head bloodied.
On Friday, Hamas said the 35-year-old father, Yarden Bibas, will be one of three male hostages to be freed on Saturday.
Israelis are still anxiously awaiting word of his wife, Shiri, and their two children, Ariel, now 5, and Kfir, who was 9 months old at the time of his capture — the youngest hostage taken into Gaza. Last week, Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, seemed to brace the public for the likelihood that they would not come out alive, saying the military was “gravely concerned” for the mother and children.
Hamas claimed last year that Ms. Bibas and her children had been killed by an Israeli airstrike, but Israeli officials have never confirmed that. Several hostages were killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, accidentally shot or possibly as a result of Israeli airstrikes. The military has also said some civilian hostages may have been killed by Israeli forces as they were being kidnapped on the day of the Oct. 7 attack.
The Bibas family has been through “a twisted reality from hell,” a relative, Yifat Zailer, said in an interview last year.
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