Jerusalem/Cairo (Reuters)-Hamas said on Friday that he is investigating a possible error in identifying remains delivered to Israel under a ceasefire agreement, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened retaliation because of non-release of the hostage body shiri bibas.
Hamas should have delivered the bodies of Shiri Bibas and his two sons, Kfir and Ariel, on Thursday, along with the remains of a hostage, according to the ceasefire agreement that interrupted the fighting in Gaza since the last month.
Four bodies were delivered and the identities of the boys Bibas and the fourth hostage, Oded Lifshitz, were confirmed.
But Israeli experts said the fourth body was an unidentified woman, not from Bibas, who was kidnapped along with her children and her husband, Yarden, during the Hamas attack to Israel on October 7, 2023.
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Base Naim, a member of Hamas’s political office, said “unfortunate errors” can occur, especially since Israeli bombings have mixed the bodies of Israeli and Palestinians hostages, thousands of which are still buried in the rubble.
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“We confirm that it is not of our values or of our interest to maintain any bodies or not fulfill the agreements and agreements we have signed,” he said in a statement.
Hamas said separately that he would investigate Israeli statements and announce the results.
Failure to release the body and staged public delivery of the four coffins on Thursday caused indignation in Israel and caused a threat of retaliation by Netanyahu.
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“We will act with determination to bring Shiri back home along with all our hostages – alive and dead – and ensure that Hamas pay the total price for this cruel and perverse violation of the deal,” he said in a video statement, accusing Hamas of acting “indescribably cynically” by placing the body of a woman of Gaza in the coffin instead of Bibas.
Hamas said in November 2023 that the children and their mother had been killed in an Israeli air strike and Ismail al-thawabta, director of the Gaza Government Media Office, said Netanyahu “has full responsibility for her and her death children”.
But the Israeli military said that intelligence assessments and forensic analysis of the bodies of the children’s children indicated that they were deliberately killed by their captors.
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Netanyahu gave no details about a possible Israeli response, but the incident stressed the fragility of the United States ceasefire agreement with the help of Qatar and Egypt mediators last month.
Six living hostages should be released on Saturday in exchange for 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, according to Hamas, and the beginning of negotiations for a second phase of ceasefire is expected for the coming days.
“Hamas needs to return the hostages, as agreed in the ceasefire-the living and the dead,” said Israeli Military spokesman Nadav Shoshani in a statement on the X social media platform. “They have to bring Shiri back And they have to free the 6 living hostages expected for tomorrow. ”
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With the increase in tension in relation to the ceasefire in Gaza, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to intensify operations in another Palestinian territory, the busy West Bank, after several explosions hit buses that were empty in their deposits near Tel Aviv.
There were no reports of victims, but the explosions resembled the campaign of suicidal attacks against public transport that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians during the second intifada in the early 2000s.
