Killed, Missing or Still in Captivity? Where is 10-month-old baby Kfir Bibas, Israel's youngest hostage?

The latest swap of Hamas-held hostages for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel took place on Tuesday evening as part of a cease-fire agreement between the warring sides. Ten Israeli hostages – nine of them women and a 17-year-old girl – and two Thai nationals were returned to Israeli territory, the military said. About an hour later, Israel set free 30 Palestinian prisoners, according to The Associated Press. In the attack that started the war on 7 October in southern Israel, Hamas took about 240 hostages. Of the captives, roughly 30 are children. Kfir Bibas was the youngest, at ten months old. He has spent nearly a fifth of his life as a Hamas hostage. The infant’s whereabouts are still unknown as the majority of the other young hostages have been freed. Here’s all we know about the infant hostage from Israel. The abduction On 7 October, Saturday, Kfir Bibas was kidnapped by Palestinian militants from his Nir Oz kibbutz in the south of Israel and taken to Gaza. Although the infant was still only crawling at the time of his seizure, his aunt Eylon Keshet observed that it is possible that he had reached the point where he began to use things to get up and move around, as per AP. Video showed Kfir and Ariel wrapped in a blanket over their mother Shiri shortly after the Hamas attack, while militants surrounded her and yelled in Arabic. The mother appeared terrified. “No one will hurt her, so she would know that we care about humanity. Cover her and keep her until you take her alive. Let her know,” a man is heard saying in the video. “She has children,” says another. “She has children, yes,” the first speaker responds. [caption id=“attachment_13448062” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Israeli protesters call for the release of the Bibas family, whose members are being held hostage in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group, in Tel Aviv. AP[/caption] Yarden Bibas, the father of the boys, was also captured along with his wife and sons, and he seemed to have suffered injuries in pictures. Ofri Bibas Levy, his sister, questioned on Tuesday as to why it was taking so long for the boys to be let free. Yarden’s cousin Keshet told CNN that their grandparents were killed in the attack. Hamas has released women, children, and teenagers under the ongoing temporary cease-fire, but according to his family, the baby with red hair and a toothless smile is not on the lists of people who will be released. “Maybe it’s part of a psychological war against us. My hope is that they don’t see them as a trophy.” Ever since the attack, their family has been in emotional anguish together with other relatives of hostages. They don’t know if Kfir is still alive, and they find it hard to understand how a defenseless little kid could possibly survive in captivity. “I am mostly trying to understand how they pass an entire day there,” Bibas Levy told AP in an interview earlier this month. “Is Kfir getting his bottle?” she asked. Killed or held by another Palestinian group? According to The Guardian, shortly before Wednesday’s planned release of hostages, Hamas claimed the baby along with his mother and brother has been killed in an Israeli bombing in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces said it was trying to verifying the claims. Issuing a statement, it said, “IDF representatives spoke with the Bibas family following the recent reports and are with them at this difficult time. The IDF is assessing the accuracy of the information. Earlier, Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari, during a briefing, had claimed that a different Palestinian group was holding the family, but Hamas was in charge of ensuring their safety. “The responsibility over all the hostages, including the Bibas family, held by other (militias) inside the strip, is exclusively Hamas’ responsibility,” Hagari said in a briefing. While Gaza is ruled by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other militant groups are also active there. On Monday, CNN quoted a diplomatic source briefed on the negotiations, as saying that over 40 of the hostages captured on 7 October are not currently in the hands of Hamas. The faces of the eight or so children who are reportedly still in Hamas’ custody have inspired a grieving country to demand their release. “A symbol of the brutality” Kfir is now seen as a symbol of the brutality of Hamas’ attack from last month, both in Israel and abroad. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has taken Kfir’s photo to foreign media outlets and displayed it on TV. [caption id=“attachment_13448082” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Israeli protesters call for the release of the Bibas family, whose members are being held hostage in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group, in Tel Aviv. AP[/caption] Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant referred to him in a news conference, wondering who was looking out for him, as per AP. “I think an entire nation wished they were coming home,” a Channel 12 reporter broke down on camera this week while covering the family. A demonstration for the family Israelis demanding the swift release of all hostages are taking Kfir’s and his brother Ariel’s, who is four years old, as a rallying cry. On Tuesday, there was a demonstration in Tel Aviv in favour of the Bibas family. “There is no precedent for something like this, for a baby who was kidnapped when he was nine months old. Is baby Kfir the enemy of Hamas?” Eylon Keshet told reporters. Although it was not anticipated that Kfir, his brother, and his mother would be released on Tuesday, Israel and Hamas decided on Monday to extend their cease-fire until this coming Wednesday. For those unversed, men are not allowed to get any releases under the conditions of the cease-fire. [caption id=“attachment_13448092” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Protesters release balloons as they call for the release of the Bibas family, whose members are being held hostage in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group, in Tel Aviv. AP[/caption] Kfir’s family issued a statement when he was not released on Monday, stating that they were left speechless by “the understanding that we won’t receive the embrace we so wished for.” Israel’s military spokesperson and the spokesperson for Arabic media both cited Kfir in separate statements, seemingly in attempt to increase pressure on Hamas to release the Bibas boys and their mother before the truce ends. On Tuesday afternoon, around a 100 people gathered at the Hostages and Missing Persons Square in Tel Aviv to release orange balloons in protest of the Bibas family’s abduction, particularly the children. “They have been 53 days in Gaza, and we don’t know who is hugging them, or giving them baths, or calming them down if they are crying,” Bibas Levy said during a press conference. The truce agreement Before the negotiations for the releases with Israel, it has been believed that Hamas held more than 200 hostages in Gaza. Since last Friday, under the provisions of the breakthrough truce agreement, groups of Israeli nationals and foreign nationals have been released daily, the most of them women and children. Figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank, which gets its data from Hamas-run health authorities in the Gaza Strip, show that since Israel began its offensive in response to the terror attacks by Hamas on 7 October, over 14,800 Palestinians — 6,000 of them children — have died in Gaza.