 "A man walks his dog past graffiti of Shiri and Yarden Bibas and their sons, Ariel, left, and Kfir (right), who were taken captive by Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel, While Yarden Bibas was freed from captivity earlier this month, the bodies of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir will be handed over today. AP")
The Bibas family on Saturday said it has not received any information from the Israeli military regarding the killing of three family members.
A statement from the family read, “Any publication of details (including references to the treatment of the bodies) is against the family’s wishes, and we ask that this be avoided. The family has not received any such details from official sources.”
The Israeli military had earlier said that the two young hostages, Kfir and Ariel Bibas, were killed by “terrorists with their bare hands”.
Meanwhile, Shiri’s body was positively identified earlier today, and the remains of the two boys were verified on Friday.
Just a month after the Bibas family was kidnapped, Hamas said that the children and their mother were killed in an Israeli air strike. However, this claim was rejected by Israel which said intelligence assessments and forensic analysis of the bodies of the Bibas children indicated that they were deliberately killed by their captors.
The Bibas family described the deaths of the three hostages as murder but asked that the manner of the death not be shared publically.
“The family requests to cease adding details regarding the fact that Shiri and the children were murdered by their captors,” it said.
Hamas released five Israeli hostages , among the last living captives to be released under the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal.
The hostages who were released on Saturday were: Eliya Cohen, 27, Omer Shem Tov, 22, and Israeli-Argentine Omer Wenkert, 23, Tal Shoham, 40, and Avera Mengistu, 38.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday said that Hamas has to pay for not sending back the body of hostage Shiri Bibas as agreed under the Gaza ceasefire deal.
Earlier, Israel had said that one of the bodies returned from Gaza was not that of Shiri Bibas, as claimed by Hamas.
Netanyahu said that the Palestinian terrorist group has acted “in an unspeakably cynical manner” by sending a Gazan woman’s body in a coffin instead of that of Shiri’s along with the bodies of her two sons Kfir and Ariel Bibas.
With inputs from agencies