Body returned 'not hostage', Israeli military says
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Israel has accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire deal after forensic testing revealed the body returned from Gaza on Thursday was not that of Shiri Bibas.
The three other bodies handed over have been identified as her sons, Ariel and Kfir, who would have been aged five and two, and peace activist Oded Lifschitz, 84, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. Hamas have said Shiri's remains seem to have been mixed up with other bodies under the rubble of a structure after an Israeli air strike.
Also in the programme: Can Arab countries come up with a plan to change Donald Trump's mind on Gaza?; and a BBC investigation looks into the companies fuelling West Africa's opioid epidemic.
(Photo shows Israeli soldiers carrying the coffins of deceased hostages on 20 February 2025. Credit: Handout via REUTERS)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour. |
| 0:05.6 | It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London. |
| 0:09.5 | I'm Tim Franks. |
| 0:11.0 | It was, said the British ambassador to Israel today, |
| 0:14.7 | a gruesome new low for Hamas, |
| 0:17.7 | that the body of a young mother, Shiribis, |
| 0:20.5 | abducted on October the 7th, |
| 0:22.0 | 2023, has not been returned, as promised by the militant group, Hamas, as part of the current |
| 0:29.1 | ceasefire. |
| 0:30.1 | And that Israeli officials say their pathologists have shown that Shiri's two young children, |
| 0:35.2 | Ariel and Kaffir, whose bodies were handed over on Thursday, |
| 0:38.9 | had not been killed in an Israeli airstrikes, Hamas claimed, but had been, in the words of the Israeli |
| 0:44.1 | authorities, murdered by terrorists. Indeed, just within the last few minutes, the chief spokesman |
| 0:50.3 | of the Israeli Defence Forces, Daniel Hagari, says that those pathological inquiries show that, in his words, the terrorists did not kill them by gunfire. |
| 1:01.8 | They killed them with their own hands. |
| 1:05.6 | Hamas, for its part, says it's investigating whether there was, as it puts it, a mix-up over the body of Shiri |
| 1:11.6 | Bibas. This is a particular shade of agony for her husband and the father of Ariel and Kaffir, |
| 1:17.7 | Yarden Bibas, who was released from captivity in Gaza on the 1st of February, apparently until |
| 1:22.4 | that point unaware that his wife and children were dead. There are also big questions over what |
| 1:27.4 | this means for the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. |
| 1:30.6 | Just before we came on air, we got this statement from Offrey Bibas, |
| 1:34.5 | the sister of Yardin and the aunt of Ariel and Kaffir. |
... |
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