CNN
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Hamas on Tuesday said that it will release the dead bodies of four Israeli hostages on Thursday, including the two youngest people held by the group, Kfir and Ariel Bibas.
The group will also release six living hostages on Saturday, instead of the three that had been expected, Khalil Al-Hayya, head of the group’s negotiating team, said in a statement.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office confirmed on Tuesday that an agreement had been reached during negotiations in Cairo for “four slain hostages” to be handed over on Thursday and “six living hostages” to be released on Saturday.
It added that “four additional slain hostages are expected to be handed over to Israel next week.”
A spokesperson for the Israeli Hostage Families Forum said that the families of all the hostages set for release, dead and alive, have been notified.
Israel is expected to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the Israelis, as in past weeks.
It is clearest indication that the Bibas children – who were just nine months and four years old, respectively, when they were kidnapped in October 2023 – are indeed dead.
Israel has not yet confirmed their deaths and has not yet commented on Hamas’ announcement.
An Egyptian source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to CNN that talks involving Egyptian, Qatari, Israeli, and American officials had succeeded, and Hamas will release the remaining hostages from phase one of the truce on Saturday.
Hamas claimed in November 2023 that Kfir and Ariel Bibas were killed along with their mother in an Israeli airstrike, and released a video of their father Yarden, who was also held hostage, in which he blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for their deaths.
An Israeli military spokesperson at the time called the video “psychological terror,” but the military has told relatives that they may not be alive, according to a spokesperson for the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
Hamas released Yarden Bibas, alive, on February 1.