By Amir Cohen and Maayan Lubell
NIR OZ, Israel, Feb 20 (Reuters) - A few hours after Hamas said it would return the bodies of Israeli hostages Shiri Bibas and her two little children on Thursday, her sister-in-law said she had not given up hope of seeing them return home, alive.
"I ask you not to eulogise my family yet," Ofri Bibas Levy posted on Facebook. "We have been hoping for 16 months and we will not give up hope now."
Shiri Bibas and her ginger-haired sons, Ariel and baby Kfir, have become a symbol for Israelis of the ruthlessness of the October 7, 2023 attack, when they were abducted by Palestinian militants from their kibbutz, Nir Oz, and taken to Gaza.
One in four kibbutz members were either killed or kidnapped that day. Images of a terrified Shiri Bibas surrounded by gunmen and clutching her boys, ages four and nine months at the time, circulated on social media within hours of the abduction.
Tricycles and toys were still scattered on the lawn outside the family's home, while the bullet-pierced front door carried posters of the four smiling Bibas family members.
Shiri's husband, Yarden Bibas, was also seized from the kibbutz but taken separately from the family. He was released on February 1 as part of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire that took effect a little over a month ago.
Most of the women and children among the 251 abducted in the Hamas-led attack were freed in a swap deal for Palestinian prisoners and detainees, women and minors, in a brief truce in late November 2023.
But these did not include Shiri and the children. At the time, Hamas said they had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Israel said it was unable to verify the claim and the three are not among the 36 Gaza hostages Israeli authorities have declared dead in absentia, based on intelligence and forensics.
A year ago, the Israeli military recovered CCTV video of them alive in Gaza on the day of their abduction and in the months that followed said only that there was serious concern for their lives.
"MY LIGHT"
On November 30, 2023, Hamas released a video of Yarden in captivity, pleading for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring them home, to be buried.
In a written statement to media six days after his release this month, Yarden intimated that his remarks in that video had been dictated to him, but repeated his request to Netanyahu to bring his family home.
"My light is still there, and as long as they're there, everything here is dark," he said. His sister, Ofri Bibas Levy, has said Yarden, 35, has been clinging to the hope that Hamas had lied to him about the fate of his wife and children.
The bodies handed over on Thursday will undergo forensic testing before authorities confirm their identities.
"Until we have the fact, dead or alive, we have the hope," said Yiftach Cohen, a member of the Nir Oz community, as he stood outside the Bibas family home.
But hope dimmed later on Wednesday after Netanyahu's office said it had received the list of hostages whose bodies are to be released on Thursday.
"This news cuts like a knife through our hearts, the families' hearts and the hearts of people all over the world," said the Hostages Families Forum.
(Additional reporting by Michal Yaakov Itzhaki; Writing by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
