The body of a woman handed over by Palestinian extremist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip is that of the kidnapped hostage Shiri Bibas, the Nir Oz kibbutz confirmed early on Saturday.
“The kibbutz announces with deep pain that she was murdered while being held hostage in Gaza,” said a spokeswoman.
Hamas handed over the body late on Friday to the Red Cross.
Hamas turned over the bodies of the 32-year-old German-Israeli woman’s sons, Ariel and Kfir – who were just 4 years old and 9 months old when they were abducted – along with another deceased captive, 84-year-old peace activist Oded Lifshitz, on Thursday.
Israeli forensic experts later determined that the remains in a fourth coffin did not belong to Shiri Bibas as Hamas claimed.
In a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the Bibas family said experts at Israel’s Institute of Forensic Medicine had positively identified the body.
“Our Shiri was murdered in captivity and has now returned home to her sons, husband, sister, and all her family to rest,” it said.
“Despite our fears about their fate, we continued to hope that we would get to embrace them, and now we are in pain and heartbroken.”
The family continued to demand the immediate return of all the remaining hostages.
“There is no more important goal. There can be no rehabilitation without them.”
Hamas intends to release six more hostages on Saturday, three of them earlier than planned.
The handover of Tal Shoham, Omer Shem-Tov, Eliya Cohen, Omer Wenkert, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed is scheduled to begin at 11 am (0900 GMT). In return, Israel is expected to release around 600 Palestinian prisoners from its jails, including 60 serving long sentences, according to Palestinian sources.
Among the six hostages to be freed are two men who have been held by Hamas for around 10 years. Prior to their abduction, they had crossed the border into the Gaza Strip of their own initiative. According to Israeli sources, both men are dealing with psychological issues.
The other four men were abducted on October 7, 2023, by Hamas and other extremist groups during their unprecedented massacre in southern Israel, which resulted in 1,200 deaths.
Three of them were kidnapped at the Nova music festival near the Gaza border, and one was seized from the nearby Be’eri kibbutz while visiting relatives there.
