After Gaza hostage release, Israeli family demands 'answers' on wife, sons

 

Relatives of an Israeli hostage freed in the latest Gaza ceasefire swap made an emotional plea Monday for answers from Israeli authorities on the fate of his wife and sons.

Yarden Bibas, 35, was released by Gaza militants on Saturday, after being held captive in the Palestinian territory for more than 15 months.

Together with his wife Shiri and their two sons Ariel and Kfir, they were all seized by militants during Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war.

Hamas has previously declared that Shiri Bibas and the two children had been killed in an Israeli air strike in November 2023, but Israel has not confirmed their deaths.

"We will no longer accept uncertainty. We demand answers. We demand them back," Shiri Bibas's sister, Dana Silberman-Sitton, told reporters at the Sheba hospital in central Israel.

"The state failed to protect them. The state has been failing for almost 16 months to bring them home."

"It's the responsibility of the government and the state to Shiri, Ariel and Kfir, to Yarden, to me and our entire family, and to all the citizens of Israel," she added, her voice breaking.

Gal Hirsch, the government's hostage coordinator, said on Saturday that "we have been searching for them for a long time" and demanding "information about their condition from the mediators".

Footage filmed by Hamas militants during their attack showed Shiri Bibas clutching her two red-haired boys outside their home near the Gaza border.

The boys -- Kfir, the youngest hostage whose second birthday fell in January, and his five-year-old brother Ariel -- have become symbols of the hostages' ordeal.

During the Hamas attack, militants took 251 hostages, 76 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military has confirmed are dead.

Shiri Bibas' parents, Yossi and Margit Silberman, died in a fire in their home in Nir Oz kibbutz, in southern Israel, when it came under attack on October 7, 2023.

Since the first, 42-day phase of Gaza ceasefire began on January 19, militants have so far freed 18 hostages, in four hostage-prisoner swaps.

During the current phase a total of 33 hostages are to be freed in return for some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.