Theirs were the faces that broke hearts.
Two small, red-headed Israeli boys, with picture-perfect smiles and hair so fiery that people dressed in orange to remind the world they had not been seen in over a year. A terrified mother clinging to both of her sons while all three were captured by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023.
Sixteen months of anguished family members, community members and world leaders asking, “Where are they?”
At last, the world knows their fate.
Hamas leaders turned over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two sons, Kfir Bibas and his older brother, Ariel, on Thursday, bringing an end to a saga that has gripped the attention of so many around the world for more than 16 months.
The body of a fourth slain hostage, journalist and peace activist Oded Lifshitz, was also released Thursday. Hamas is expected to release six living hostages on Saturday.
Hamas had claimed in November 2023 that the Bibas boys and their mother had been killed in an Israeli airstrike but offered no evidence. Israel’s military said at the time it could not confirm their deaths, but later acknowledged it was gravely concerned about their welfare.
On Wednesday, The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a volunteer organization aimed at bringing Israel hostages home, confirmed the news of their deaths.
“This news cuts like a knife through our hearts, the families’ hearts and the hearts of people all over the world,” the forum said in a press release, adding, “They weren’t just names – they were beloved people, with families who cherished them, with dreams and futures stolen from them.”
The last time Shiri Bibas and her sons were seen alive was in a video, circulated widely on social media, showing gunmen abducting the mother, anguish etched on her face, as both children hold still, pressed together in her arms.
Kfir was just 9 months old and Ariel was 4 years old when they were kidnapped along with their parents, as Hamas fighters tore through Israel’s border towns in the Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 people and took more than 200 others hostage. More than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since, according to Gaza medical officials.
The Bibas boys were the youngest Israeli hostages and the only children still held in captivity by Hamas after 100 hostages were released in a short-lived ceasefire agreement in November 2023.
Their father, Yarden, 34, who had been kidnapped separately and held in a different part of Gaza, was released weeks ago, on Feb. 1, through a new ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. The first phase of the deal called for Hamas to turn over 33 hostages in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. In turn, Israel was to stop its attacks in Gaza for six months and begin to withdraw its troops from populated areas.
For the hostages’ families, news of the agreement stirred both hopes and fears. Many had received no word on whether their loved ones were still alive.
“The families cannot stand it anymore,” said Yosi Shnaider, Shiri Bibas’ cousin, when her fate and her children’s were unknown. “I have no words to describe how difficult it is.”
Following Yarden Bibas’ release, the family clung to hope that his wife and sons would soon be set free.
In captivity, they had become symbols of the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust.
Photos of the boys were plastered on the sides of buildings around the world. In one, infant Kfir holds a small pink elephant, a big smile stretched across his tiny face. In another, Ariel looks quizzically into the camera, smiling like his brother.
“Bring him home now!” demanded the caption.
They inspired art and songs, prayers and protests as an anxious world waited for news of their fate.
Kfir would have turned 2 in January.
Contributing: Savannah Kuchar; Reuters
Read More: Kfir, Ariel Bibas’ bodies returned to Israel in Hamas ceasefire deal