CAIRO, February 21. /TASS/. Hamas has handed over to employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) the body of Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas, the Al Jazeera television channel reported.
According to its sources, Hamas’ armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades was in charge of the transfer, which was also confirmed by the Al Hadath television channel.
Hamas has not yet commented these reports, but at about the same time when the transfer was reported by TV channel, Hamas made a post on its Telegram channel concerning the death of the Bibas family, where it rejects the responsibility for the death of the Bibas kids, nine-month-old Kfir and four-year-old Ariel, placing the blame on the Israeli government.
Earlier in the day, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Spokesman Daniel Hagari refuted Hamas’ allegations that the Bibas babies had been killed in an airstrike. Ariel and Kfir Bibas were murdered by terrorists in cold blood," he said. "The terrorists did not shoot the two young boys—they killed them with their bare hands. Afterwards, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities. This assessment is based on both forensic findings from the identification process, and intelligence that supports the findings."
He also confirmed that "the body of an unidentified woman" was handed over by Hamas on February 20 instead of the kids’ mother, Shiri Bibas. He warned that this was the gravest violation of the Gaza ceasefire deal by the Palestinian radicals.
Hamas said on February 20 that it had handed over the bodies of three members of the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz to the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army said that the identities of Lifshitz and the Bibas children had been confirmed, but the fourth body, which was supposed to belong to Shiri Bibas, remained "unidentified" as "no matches were found with any other hostage."
In mid-January, Israel and Hamas reached an Egypt-, Qatar-, and US-brokered three-stage agreement to release the hostages held in Gaza and declare a ceasefire in the enclave. The three-phase deal took effect on January 19. During the initial 42-day phase, Hamas is expected to release 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.