The UN’s human rights chief has slammed the “abhorrent and cruel” parading of hostage remains as Hamas handed over the bodies of four Israelis — including two young children.
Israeli brothers Kfir and Ariel Bibas, aged 9 months and 4, were the youngest captives taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023 and are among the most potent symbols of the trauma inflicted that day.
Their bodies were delivered to the Red Cross along with their dead mother Shiri Bibas and a fourth deceased hostage, Oded Lifschitz, on Friday morning (AEDT).
The macabre handover marks the first return of dead bodies during the current ceasefire agreement.
The coffins were placed on a stage, with armed Hamas militants in black and camouflage uniforms surrounding the area.
One militant stood beside a poster of a man standing over coffins wrapped in Israeli flags. It read “The Return of the War = The Return of your Prisoners in Coffins”.
“The parading of bodies in the manner seen this morning is abhorrent and cruel, and flies in the face of international law,” said the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk.
“We urge that all returns are conducted in privacy, and with respect and care.”
Red Cross staff held up white screens in an attempt to conceal the coffins from the gaze of the large crowds as they were loaded into their vehicles.
The Red Cross said: “These operations should be done privately out of the utmost respect for the deceased and for those left grieving.”
Kfir Bibas was nine months old when the Bibas family, including their father Yarden, was abducted from their home in the Kibbutz Nir Oz community.
Hamas said in November 2023 that the boys and their mother had been killed in an Israeli air strike, but their deaths were never confirmed by Israeli authorities.
Their father was returned in an exchange for prisoners this month.
Red Cross vehicles drove away from the handover site in the Gaza Strip with four black coffins that had been placed on a stage. Each of the caskets had a small picture of the hostages.
Armed Hamas militants in black and camouflage uniforms surrounded the area.
After the hostages were handed over by the Red Cross, the coffins were scanned for explosives, according to the military, before being transported to Israel.
Israelis lined the road in the rain near the Gaza border to pay their respects as the convoy carrying the coffins drove by.
“We stand here together, with a broken heart, the sky is also crying with us and we pray to see better days,” said one woman, who gave her name only as Efrat.
In Tel Aviv, people gathered, some weeping, at what has come to be known as Hostages Square outside Israel’s defence headquarters.
“Agony. Pain. There are no words. Our hearts — the hearts of an entire nation — lie in tatters,” said President Isaac Herzog.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country was “united in unbearable grief” and vowed to “eliminate” Hamas.
“Shiri and the kids became a symbol,” said Yiftach Cohen, of the Nir Oz kibbutz, which lost around a quarter of its residents, either killed or kidnapped, during the assault.
Some of those Israelis killed on October 7 were known peace activists.
Lifshitz was 83 when he was abducted from Nir Oz, the kibbutz he helped found. His wife, Yocheved, 85 at the time, was seized with him and released two weeks later, along with another woman.
“Our family’s healing process will begin now and will not end until the last hostage is returned,” the family said.
The Hamas-led attack into Israel killed some 1200 people, according to Israeli tallies, with 251 kidnapped. Israel’s subsequent military campaign has killed some 48,000 people, Palestinian health authorities say, and left densely populated Gaza in ruins.
Thursday’s handover of bodies will be followed by the return of six living hostages on Saturday, in exchange for hundreds more Palestinians, expected to be women and minors detained by Israeli forces in Gaza during the war.
Negotiations for a second phase, expected to cover the return of around 60 remaining hostages, less than half of whom are believed to be alive, and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip to allow an end to the war, are expected to begin in the coming days.
-with AAP
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