Slain Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas was not killed by an explosion, as Hamas claimed, according to Israel’s top forensics chief.
Dr. Chen Kugel, director of the Abu Kabir National Institute of Forensic Medicine, on Saturday backed Israeli officials’ assertions that Bibas, 32, and her two sons, 9-month-old Kfir and 4-year-old Ariel, were not killed by an Israeli airstrike in November 2023.
“Our examination found no injuries consistent with a bombing,” Kugel told reporters.
Israeli forensics experts found no evidence that Shiri Bibas and her sons, Kfir and Ariel, died as a result of a bombing.
Hamas has long claimed that Bibas and her boys were killed in an Israeli airstrike in November 2023. Anas Deeb/UPI/Shutterstock“We were met with depths of evil and malice that could not be conceived,” Kugel added of examining the bodies.
While Kugel did not say how Bibas died, Israeli officials have claimed she was “brutally” murdered alongside her children in November 2023.
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Hamas killed the boys — whose horrific kidnapping became a symbol of the Oct. 7 massacre — “with their bare hands.
“Afterward, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities,” Hagari said of the Palestinian terrorists.
After an “error” from Hamas, Shiri’s body was returned to Israel on Friday. IDF/ XHusband and father Yarden Bibas, who was released by Hamas earlier this month, thanked a support group for their help as he mourns the death of his wife and children, whose fate had remained a mystery.
“Thank you so much – to each and every one of you who cared, prayed and helped my family and me,” Bibas wrote Saturday, his first public message since the return of his loved ones’ bodies.
“I appreciate it very much and it’s not taken for granted,” he added.
The kidnapping of Shiri and her two toddlers became a symbol for the horrors of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. Obtained by The New York PostHamas has maintained that Shiri Bibas and her children were killed by an Israeli airstrike in November 2023, a period covering the harshest bombardment campaign in Gaza that decimated a majority of the buildings in the north.
The terror group claimed it was the bombardment that was also behind the late return of the mother’s corpse, after Hamas released the body of an unknown Palestinian woman in her place Thursday, claiming the remains had been mixed up when they were recovered from the airstrike rubble.
Shiri Bibas’s body was eventually returned Friday evening after international outcry.
Israel has accused Hamas of “brutally” murdering Bibas and her sons, whose coffins were paraded in Gaza.
The Israel Defense Force called the incident a “serious violation” of the cease-fire agreement struck between the two warring sides, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning Hamas that the act will not be forgotten.
Along with the corpses of Shiri Bibas and the toddlers, Hamas also released the body of journalist and peace advocate Oded Lifshitz, along with six living hostages freed Saturday.
The terror group is scheduled to release the bodies of four more captives later this week as the final exchange of the first phase of the cease-fire deal, which called on Hamas to free 33 captives.
Both sides are still negotiating the terms of the second phase, which call for the freedom of all remaining living captives in Gaza, as well as establishing the terms to a permanent end to the war and Israel’s withdrawal from the Palestinian enclave.
