Hamas releases new hostage body after misidentification of Shiri Bibas

The remains of Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas has reportedly been collected by Red Cross officials after a body wrongly identified as hers was handed over by Hamas militants in a macabre spectacle on Thursday local time.

Ms Bibas and her and her two sons Kfir and Ariel, along with the remains of a fourth hostage were meant to be handed over as part of the ceasefire deal that has halted fighting in Gaza since last month.

Four bodies were delivered and the identities of the Bibas boys and the fourth hostage, Oded Lifshitz, were confirmed.

But Israeli specialists said the fourth body was that of an unidentified woman and not Bibas, who was kidnapped along with her sons and her husband, Yarden, during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Israeli media is reporting that Red Cross has the body but is yet to hand it over to Israeli Defence Forces.

Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Mardwai confirmed on Hamas-run Al-Aqsa television that Shiri Bibas had been handed over.

Responding to the mix-up, Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said “unfortunate mistakes” could occur, especially as Israeli bombing had mingled the bodies of Israeli hostages and Palestinians, thousands of whom were still buried in the rubble.

“We confirm that it is not in our values or our interest to keep any bodies or not to abide by the covenants and agreements that we sign,” he said in a statement.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed revenge after Hamas turned the release of the bodies into a horrific spectacle.

Several missiles were placed next to the coffins. On them was written the message “they were killed by USA bombs”.

A sign nearby said: “The war criminal Netanyahu and his Nazi army killed them with missiles from Zionist warplanes.”

Militants also 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”.

The terrorist group also planted propaganda material inside the coffins which was only discovered when they were opened in Israel.

The IDF also condemned the actions of Hamas, writing in a post to X that “based on the intelligence available to us and forensic findings from the identification process, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were brutally murdered by terrorists in captivity in November 2023”.

“During the identification process, it was determined that the additional body received is not that of Shiri Bibas, and no match was found for any other hostage. This is an anonymous, unidentified body.

“This is a violation of utmost severity by the Hamas terrorist organization, which is obligated under the agreement to return four deceased hostages. We demand that Hamas return Shiri home along with all our hostages.”

—with AP