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 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.
