The Israeli Prime Minister stressed that “Hamas will pay the full price for this cruel and despicable violation of the agreement”
TEL AVIV, February 21 – The radicals from the Hamas movement have handed over a corpse of an unknown Gazan instead of the body of hostage Shiri Bibas, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called it “a cruel and despicable violation of the agreement.”
“The brutality of the Hamas monsters knows no bounds. They not only abducted the father, Yarden Bibas, young mother Shiri, and their two young children. In their utter cynicism, they didn’t even let Shiri be near their babies, these angels. Instead, they returned the body of an unknown Gazan woman in a coffin,” Netanyahu said, threatening that Hamas would “pay the full price” for it.
“We will act decisively to bring Shiri home, along with all our hostages, both alive and dead. We guarantee that Hamas will pay the full price for this cruel and despicable violation of the agreement,” he added.
Hamas says it had handed over the bodies of three members of the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz to the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip on February 20. The youngest of the Bibases, Kfir, was 9 months old at the time of the abduction on October 7, 2023, and his brother Ariel was 4.
The Israeli army said that the identities of Lifshitz and the Bibas children had been confirmed, but during the identification of the fourth body, which was supposed to belong to Shiri Bibas, “no matches were found with any other hostage.” According to the military, this is an “unidentified body.”
On January 15, it became known that Israel and Hamas had reached an agreement on the release of hostages held in Gaza and the implementation of a ceasefire in the enclave. The agreement, which includes three stages, entered into force on January 19. The first stage will last 42 days, during which time Hamas must release at least 33 hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons.
BY: The Times Union
