Israel grieves as Hamas turns over the bodies of four Gaza hostages

Hamas displays four black coffins on a stage in Gaza surrounded by banners, including a large one depicting Prime Minister Netanyahu as a vampire

Hamas on Thursday (February 20, 2025) released the bodies of four Israeli hostages, said to include a mother and her two children who have long been feared dead and had come to embody the nation’s agony following the October 7, 2023, attack.

The remains were presumed to be of Shiri Bibas and her two children, Ariel and Kfir, as well as Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 when he was abducted. Kfir, who was 9 months old when he was taken, was the youngest captive. Hamas has said all four were killed along with their guards in Israeli air strikes.

“Our hearts — the hearts of an entire nation — lie in tatters,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in a statement. “On behalf of the State of Israel, I bow my head and ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness for not protecting you on that terrible day. Forgiveness for not bringing you home safely.”

The militants displayed four black coffins on a stage in the Gaza Strip surrounded by banners, including a large one depicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a vampire. Thousands of people, including large numbers of masked and armed militants, looked on as the coffins were loaded onto Red Cross vehicles before being driven to Israeli forces.

The military held a small funeral ceremony, at the request of the families, before transferring the bodies to a laboratory in Israel for formal identification using DNA, a process that could take up to two days.

Israelis have celebrated the return of 24 living hostages in recent weeks under a tenuous ceasefire that paused over 15 months of war. But the handover on Thursday was a grim reminder of those who died in captivity.

Hamas is set to free six living hostages on Saturday in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, and says it will release four more bodies next week, completing the ceasefire’s first phase. That will leave the militants with some 60 hostages, all men, around half of whom are believed to be dead.