JERUSALEM – Hamas announced on Friday that it was investigating a possible error in identifying human remains that were handed over to Israel under a ceasefire agreement.
This comes after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened retaliation for the failure to release the body of hostage Shiri Bibas. Hamas was supposed to hand over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two sons, Kfir and Ariel, on Thursday, along with the remains of a fourth hostage, under the ceasefire deal that has halted fighting in Gaza since last month.
Four bodies were delivered, and the identities of the Bibas boys and the other hostage, Oded Lifshitz, were confirmed. However, Israeli specialists stated that the fourth body was that of an unidentified woman, not Bibas, who was kidnapped along with her sons and her husband, Yarden, during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said that "unfortunate mistakes" could occur, especially since Israeli bombing had mixed the bodies of Israeli hostages and Palestinians, thousands of whom remain buried in the rubble.
