Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Hamas’s final torment of the Bibas family

(Photo: Getty)

So Hamas has committed yet another act of depravity against the Bibas family. It said Shiri Bibas was in one of those four coffins it put on grim display in Gaza yesterday before handing them over to the Red Cross. But she wasn’t. It was the remains of some unknown person that Hamas passed off as the mother-of-two whose return the whole of Israel has been crying out for. Truly, is there no end to the cynicism and savagery of these terrorists?

Israel says forensic testing has confirmed that two of the coffins contained the bodies of the Bibas children: Ariel, who was four when he was kidnapped, and Kfir, who was just nine months old. A third coffin contained the remains of the 84-year-old Israeli peace activist Oded Lifschitz.

But the tests revealed that the fourth body is not Shiri’s. It seems it is not any of the hostages who were seized during Hamas’s 7 October pogrom.

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