Israel's forensic officials have confirmed that a body handed over by Hamas is that of hostage Shiri Bibas, after an earlier handover turned out to be the remains of a different unidentified woman. The episode capped a confusing and deeply painful sequence in which the family and Israeli officials had to wait for the correct remains to be returned.
The BBC report says Hamas first handed over four bodies on Thursday, including one it said was Shiri Bibas. Israeli forensic testing later showed that the fourth body was not hers. Hamas spokesman Ismail al-Thawabta then said on X that Shiri's remains seemed to have been mixed up with other bodies under rubble after an air strike, and Hamas released the correct remains on Friday evening. The sequence is important because it shows just how contested and unstable the identification process had become.
Dr Chen Kugel, director of Israel's National Institute of Forensic Medicine, said an examination found no evidence of injuries caused by bombing. That directly contradicted Hamas's earlier claim that Shiri and her two sons were killed in an Israeli airstrike. The BBC notes that the claim by Hamas was not backed by evidence in the report. Israel also said that the two children, Ariel and Kfir, had been killed with bare hands, and that evidence had been sent to partners around the world. The BBC did not see that evidence.
The Bibas family said, "Our Shiri was murdered in captivity and has now returned home." Later, after the correct remains were returned, the family said that after 16 months of seeking certainty there was no comfort in the answer, only the hope of the beginning of closure. That reaction captures the human center of the story: the return of remains does not resolve the grief.
The broader hostage context is also important. Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were kidnapped during the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. Their father, Yarden Bibas, was released alive by Hamas on February 1. Under the first phase of the ceasefire deal that began on January 19, Hamas agreed to hand over 33 hostages in return for Israel freeing 1,900 Palestinian prisoners. The exchange of living hostages and bodies remains one of the most sensitive parts of the agreement.
The report leaves the key question of how the wrong body was initially handed over unresolved, beyond Hamas's claim that the remains were mixed in rubble after an air strike. What is clear is that forensic identification, political blame and family grief all converged in a matter of hours. The case of Shiri Bibas is now both a personal tragedy and another flashpoint in the wider dispute over the war and the ceasefire process.
