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Courtesy the family/TPS-IL on 22 February, 2025
No Evidence Shiri Bibas Killed in Explosion, Coroner Says
Jerusalem, 22 February, 2025 (TPS-IL) -- Israeli forensics experts confirmed the identity of a body returned to Israel on Saturday as that of Shiri Bibas and said their examination of the remains contradicted Hamas claims that she had died in an Israeli airstrike.
“We identified Shiri Bibas two days after we identified her children. Our examination found no evidence of injuries caused by bombing,” said Dr. Chen Kugel, director of the National Institute of Forensic Medicine.
Shiri Bibas and her husband, Yarden, and sons Ariel and Kfir were abducted from their home on Kibbutz Nir Oz on the morning of Oct. 7. At just nine-months-old, the red-haired Kfir was the youngest hostage. Ariel was four.
On Friday, Israel military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a televised statement that Ariel and Kfir were killed in November 2023, and that the murderers used their bare hands.
“We can confirm that baby Kfir Bibas, just 10 months old, and his older brother Ariel, aged four, were both brutally murdered by terrorists while being held hostage in Gaza no later than November 2023. These two innocent children were taken hostage alive, along with their mother, Shiri, from their home on October 7, 2023,” Hagari said.
Shiri and her sons were due to be released along with 105 other women and children during the temporary ceasefire of November 2023. On November 29, Hamas claimed the three had been killed in an Israeli airstrike but provided no evidence. Yarden was released on Feb. 1. All four were Israeli-Argentine nationals. Argentine President Javier Milei declared two days of national mourning.
Hamas was supposed to send the remains of the three along with the body of Oded Lifshitz. But on Thursday night, the forensics center confirmed that the DNA did not belong to Shiri Bibas or any of the other Israeli hostages. Hamas sent the Shiri Bibas’s body to Israel on Friday night.
Earlier on Saturday, six hostages — Eliya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov, Tal Shoham, Omer Wenkert, Hisham al-Sayed and Avera Mengistu returned to Israel.
At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 64 remaining hostages, 36 are believed to be dead.
