Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip – Hamas released four bodies on Thursday, which Israeli officials said two young children have long been afraid and came to embody the suffering of the nation after that. October 7, 2023, an attack from Hamas on Israel. Their mother was said to have returned with them, but the Israeli forces said hours after the remains of another person were launched instead.
It was said that the remains are those Sherry Pepas and her two childrenAriel and Kafr, as well as Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 years old when he was kidnapped. Kfir, who was 9 months old when he was transferred, was the youngest prisoner. Hamas said that the four were killed with their guards in the Israeli air strikes.
In a post on social media early on Friday morning, the Israeli Defense Forces said that the remains of Ariel and Kafir had been restored, but not their mother. “During the identification process, it was determined that the additional body that was received is not the body of Sherry Pipas, and no congruence of any other hostage was found. This is an unknown identity body,” The Israeli Defense Army said.
Ali Jadallah/Anadolu/Getty
In a statement issued on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized the delivery of the wrong remains as a “harsh and expert violation” of the ceasefire agreement that stopped the fighting in the Gaza Strip and said that Hamas “will pay the full price” for the full price “against an act. He said that the fourth body He was a woman of Ghazan.
The gunmen offered four black boxes on Thursday on the stage surrounded by banners, including one large depicting the Israeli Netanyahu as a conflict, as the Red Cross vehicles arrived at the scene of the accident in the Gaza Strip.
Then the fighters carried the boxes to the Red Cross vehicles, where the employees in the red jackets covered them in white sheets before they were placed inside. Each coffin had an image installed on the front with the image of the murdered hostage that its remains were alleged inside.
The Red Cross caravan returned to Israel, where the authorities were carrying out an official definition on the remains using the DNA, which was expected to take up to two days. However, a statement issued by the Levishait family, however, shared by the hostage families forum, said that they were “deeply saddened by the official and bitter news that confirms the determination of the beloved Oded’s body.”
The family said: “We have been hoping and praying a lot for a different result. We can now mourn the husband, father, grandfather and grandfather who has been missing from October 7,” adding that the “healing process” has started now and will not end until another hostage is returned. “
Balily Oded / AP
Thousands of people, including large numbers of convincing fighters and gunmen from Hamas and other factions, met at the site of delivery on the outskirts of the southern city of Khan Yunis in Gaza.
“Every home in Israel bends its head today. We bend our heads for the severe loss of our four hostages,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “The four coffins of our loved ones require us more than ever with promises, and I swear, that what happened on October 7 will not happen again.”
Israeli channels did not broadcast delivery. At Square Square in Tel Aviv, where the Israelis gathered to watch the release of living hostages, a large screen showed a collection of photos and videos from Lifshitz and the Bibas family, including a KFIR child with a muffled laugh and a family wearing Batman fashion. Yarden Pepas, the father of the children, was not with his family on October 7, but was taken separately. He was It was released earlier this month After 16 months in captivity.
Dozens of residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz, which were kidnapped on Thursday, were kidnapped on Thursday, and gathered to wave Israeli flags outside their temporary home for an hour north of Kibbuts destroyed.
The Israelis have celebrated the return of 24 hostages in recent weeks under cease-fire Which temporarily stopped more than 15 months of war. But Thursday’s delivery will provide a dark reminder to those who died in captivity, as talks that preceded the armistice have been continuing for more than a year.
It can also provide negotiation force in the second stage of the ceasefire that barely started. The first stage was appointed to end at the beginning of March.
Kfir Bibas was only 9 months old, a red -headed infant with a non -teeth smile, when the militants stormed the family home on October 7, 2023. His brother Ariel was four years old. A video on that day showed a terrified Sherry studying the boys as the gunmen led them to Gaza.
Ariel Shalit/father
Relatives in Israel clung to hope, which represents the first and second birthdays of infidels and his fifth brother. The Pepas family said in a statement on Wednesday that it would wait for “identification procedures” before admitting that their loved ones had died.
Supporters across Israel wore an orange in solidarity with the family – referring to the hair of two red boys – and it was a famous song for children in their honor.
Like the Bibas family, Oded Lifshitz was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, along with his wife Yocheved, who was released during a week’s ceasefire in November 2023. Oded was a journalist who had a campaign to recognize the rights of Palestinian and peace between Arabs and Jews.
The militants, led by Hamas, kidnapped 251 hostages, including about 30 children, in the terrorist attack on October 7, in which they killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
More than half of the hostages, most women and children, have been issued in ceasefire agreements or other deals. The Israeli forces saved eight and regained dozens of the bodies of the people who were killed in the initial attack or who died in captivity.
Hamas is scheduled to liberate six neighborhood hostages on Saturday, compared to hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, and it says that it will released four other bodies next week, with the completion of the first stage of the ceasefire. This will leave the militants with about 60 hostages, and it is believed that all men, about half of them have died.
Hamas said it would not shoot the remaining prisoners without a permanent ceasefire and the full Israeli withdrawal. Netanyahu, with the full support of the Trump administration, says he is committed to destroying military capabilities, judging Hamas and returning all hostages, which are widely seen as mutual exclusive.
Mr. Trump’s proposal to remove about two million Palestinians from Gaza so that the United States can possess and rebuild it, which Netanyahu welcomed but its rejection globally by the Palestinians and the Arab countries, who suspended the shooting more doubt.
Enthusiasm may be hesitant to liberate more hostages if you believe that the war will resume in order to exterminate the group or transfer Gaza population by force.
The military attack of Israel has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health in Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its records. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The attack destroyed the vast areas of Gaza, which reduces the entire neighborhoods to fields of rubble and buildings that were bombed. At its peak, the war was displaced 90 % of the population of Gaza. Many have returned to their homes to find anything left and there is no way to rebuild.