Sawt Falasteen - Israel denounces Hamas as 'monsters' for staging of hostage bodies handover

The United Nations also slammed what it called the "abhorrent and cruel" staging of the event, which it said "flies in the face of international law", calling for all future handovers to be done in private.

This was the first handover of dead hostages under a fragile ceasefire that so far had only seen living captives exchanged for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

The ceremony to return the bodies of Shiri, Kfir and Ariel Bibas, alongside a fourth hostage, Oded Lifshitz, took place at a former cemetery in the southern Gazan city of Khan Yunis.

Ahead of the handover, Hamas and members of other armed Palestinian groups displayed four black coffins on a stage erected on the sandy patch of ground.

A banner behind them depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a bloodstained vampire.

Each casket bore a small photo of the deceased. White mock-up missiles nearby carried the message: "They were killed by USA bombs," a reference to Israel's top military supplier.

Hamas said an Israeli air strike killed the Bibas family early in the war, but Israel has never confirmed the claim.

"We are all enraged at the monsters of Hamas," Netanyahu said in a video message, vowing again to destroy the group.

Government spokesman David Mencer said "Hamas is a death cult that murders, that tortures and parades dead bodies".

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock accused the group of exposing hostage families to "limitless terror" with the ceremony.

- The youngest hostage -

Flag-waving Israelis lined the route along which a convoy carrying the bodies travelled from southern Israel to Tel Aviv.

Among those waiting at "Hostages Square" in Tel Aviv was museum manager Tania Coen Uzzielli, 59.

"This is one of the hardest days, I think, since October 7," she said, adding that "maybe we didn't do enough to prevent this tragedy".

Israel's military said the bodies would "undergo an identification procedure" at the city's national forensic medicine institute, where onlookers wept as the convoy arrived.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group said it had received confirmation that Lifshitz, 83 at the time of his capture, was among those handed over.

Hamas said in a statement that it and its armed wing "did everything in their power to protect the prisoners (hostages) and preserve their lives, but the barbaric and continuous bombing by the occupation prevented them from being able to save all".

During the ceremony, a militant with his face wrapped in a red and white keffiyeh scarf sat on the stage to complete documents with a Red Cross official.

The coffins were then loaded into Red Cross vehicles.

Tahani Fayad, 40, was among the hundreds of people gathered to witness the ceremony, which she called "a confirmation of the victory of the Palestinian people and proof that the occupation will not defeat us".

During their October 7, 2023 attack that triggered the Gaza war, Hamas filmed and later broadcast footage showing the Bibas family's abduction from their home near the Gaza border.

Ariel was then aged four, while Kfir was the youngest hostage at just nine months old.

Yarden Bibas, the boys' father and Shiri's husband, was abducted separately and released in a previous hostage-prisoner swap on February 1.

The bodies' repatriation is part of the six-week initial phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which took effect on January 19.

Under the first phase, militants have so far freed 19 living Israeli hostages in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners.

Of the remaining 14 Gaza hostages eligible for release under phase one, Israel says eight are dead.

- Under strain -

Palestinian prisoners are also set to be freed in Saturday's swap, but were not part of Thursday's handover.

The ceasefire in Gaza has held despite accusations of violations by both sides.

It has also come under strain from US President Donald Trump's widely condemned idea to take control of Gaza and relocate its population of more than two million Palestinians.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has said talks will begin this week on the truce's second phase, aiming to lay out a more permanent end to the war.

Senior Hamas official Taher al-Nunu told AFP on Wednesday that Hamas was ready to free all remaining hostages held in Gaza in a single swap during phase two.

Hamas and its allies took 251 people captive during the October 7 attack. Prior to Thursday's handover, there were 70 hostages still in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.

That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,297 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.

B.AbuZeid--SF-PST