Theirs were the faces that broke hearts.
Two small, redheaded Israeli boys, with picture-perfect smiles and hair so fiery that people dressed in orange to remind the world they had not been seen in over a year. A terrified mother clinging to both of her sons while all three were captured by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023.
Sixteen months of anguished family members, community members and world leaders asking, “Where are they?”
Hamas leaders turned over the bodies on Thursday that were believed to be Shiri Bibas and her two sons, Kfir Bibas and his older brother, Ariel, in saga that has gripped global attention for more than 500 days. The body of a fourth slain hostage, journalist and peace activist Oded Lifshitz, was also released.
“We had hoped and prayed so much for a different outcome.” the Lifshitz family said in a statement.
But the turnover itself marked an abhorrent and cruel spectacle that flew in the face of international law, according to United Nations rights chief Volker Turk. It only added to the grief of families who had endured many long months of agonizing uncertainty.
Early Friday the fate of the Bibas’ family took an even bleaker turn.
Israel Defense Forces said it had forensically identified the bodies of two Israeli hostage children – Kfir Bibas and his older brother, Ariel – but that the additional body they received is not that of their mother, Shiri Bibas.
More:Two red-headed babies are symbols in Oct. 7 attacks. Hamas says their bodies are coming home.
At a Gaza Strip handover site, Hamas displayed four black coffins on a stage with pictures of hostages before a gathered crowd that included militants dressed in black and camouflage uniforms, according to video of the event. Above the bodies, a large, doctored image of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was hung, depicting him as a vampire.
During the handover, one militant stood beside a poster of a man standing over coffins wrapped in Israeli flags. It read “The Return of the War = The Return of your Prisoners in Coffins,” Reuters reported. Red Cross staff held up white screens to try to conceal the coffins from onlookers as they were loaded into their vehicles amid crowds.
“Under international law, any handover of the remains of the deceased must comply with the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, ensuring respect for the dignity of the deceased and their families,” Turk said in a statement.
Related:Israelis ask if world has forgotten their hostages six months after the trauma of Oct. 7
Once in Israel Thursday, crowds carrying Israeli flags lined streets to pay tribute as a convoy transporting the bodies drove past. In Tel Aviv, people gathered, some weeping, in a public square, opposite Israel’s Defense Forces headquarters, at what has come to be known as Hostages Square.
“I think today is one of the saddest days of my 40 years in Israel,” said Nicky Cregor, 60, a social worker from Jerusalem. “I feel that we have an endless wound in our hearts that is going to take a long time to heal.”
The remains were taken in by Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine. Specialists including technicians, anthropologists and radiologists were tasked with using past clinical records to corroborate the identity of Liftshitz and Bibas family.
Through the use of X-rays, weight data comparisons, DNA databases and dental records they are also charged with answering questions about the circumstances surrounding their deaths.
In the early hours of Friday local time, news broke that while the remains of the two Bibas children and Lifshitz had been identified, the last body returned was not that of Shiri.
“No match was found for any other hostage. This is an anonymous, unidentified body,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement on social media.
“This is a violation of utmost severity by the Hamas terrorist organization, which is obligated under the agreement to return four deceased hostages,” the IDF said. “We demand that Hamas return Shiri home along with all our hostages.”
Hamas had claimed in November 2023 that the Bibas boys and their mother had been killed in an Israeli airstrike but offered no evidence.
According to the IDF, the forensic examination determined that “based on the intelligence available to us” and the identification process that Ariel and Kfir Bibas “were brutally murdered by terrorists in captivity in November 2023.”
The last time Shiri Bibas and her sons were seen alive was in a video, circulated widely on social media, showing gunmen abducting the mother, anguish etched on her face, as both children held still, pressed together in her arms.
Kfir was just 9 months old and Ariel was 4 years old when they were kidnapped along with their parents, as Hamas fighters tore through Israel’s border towns in the Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 people and took more than 200 others hostage.
The Bibas boys were the youngest Israeli hostages, and the only children still held in captivity by Hamas after 100 hostages were released in a short-lived ceasefire agreement in November 2023.
Their father, Yarden, 34, who had been kidnapped separately and held in a different part of Gaza, was released on Feb. 1, through a new ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
The first phase of the deal called for Hamas to turn over 33 hostages in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. In turn, Israel was to stop its attacks in Gaza for six months and begin to withdraw its troops from populated areas.
Following Yarden Bibas’ release, the family clung to hope that his wife and sons would soon be set free.
In captivity, they had become symbols of the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust. Photos of the boys were plastered on the sides of buildings around the world. In one, infant Kfir holds a small pink elephant, a big smile stretched across his tiny face. In another, Ariel looks quizzically into the camera, smiling like his brother.
The Bibas children inspired art and songs, prayers and protests as an anxious world waited for news of their fate. Kfir would have turned 2 in January.
Hamas is expected to release six living hostages on Saturday. Questions about Shiri Bibas remain.
Related:‘We know they were raped in Hamas captivity’: Chilling details of what hostages faced
Contributing: Savannah Kuchar; Reuters