Argentina declares national mourning after Hamas hands over bodies of Israeli Argentine children

Argentina announced two days of national mourning on Thursday after the bodies of two Israeli Argentine children who had been taken hostage by Hamas were handed over by the group.

Hamas delivered the bodies of four hostages on Thursday, three of which it said were members of the Bibas family — Shiri Bibas and her two young sons.

While the identities of the Bibas boys, Kfir and Ariel were confirmed by Israeli forensics, they said Shiri was not among them, as the militants had claimed.

President condemns killings

Argentina’s president Javier Milei will call for two-days of national mourning, his office said in an official statement.

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“The President’s office expresses its strongest condemnation of the terrorist group Hamas, following confirmation of the murder of the children of the Israeli Argentine Bibas family,” it said.

According to the assessment by Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine, the children were brutally murdered in captivity by Hamas terrorists in November 2023.

“It is monstrous that such events occurred in this century, and that their deaths were motivated by a single motive: being Jewish,” the statement read.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of committing a “cruel and evil” violation of the Gaza ceasefire deal by failing to return the mother.

ALSO READ: Netanyahu says Israel to open ‘gates of hell’ in Gaza if all hostages not returned

‘Bodies mistakenly mixed’

A Hamas official told AFP on Friday that it was likely the body of captive Shiri Bibas had been “mistakenly mixed” with others who were killed and buried under the rubble in Gaza.

They also said the group had informed the mediators in November 2023 that it was ready to hand over the bodies of the three Bibas family members.

“Mediators were informed at the time and it was also announced in a statement when the Bibas family was killed along with their captors in an Israeli air strike,” the official said.

Bibas family abduction

The two Bibas boys had become symbols of the hostage crisis along with their mother Shiri Bibas.

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

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

Their father Yarden Bibas, who was also seized during the attack, was released earlier this month but had been separated from the rest of his family.

“The Argentine republic demands the immediate release of all hostages and trusts that the terrorist group will be reduced to ashes and will become nothing more than a horrible memory in world history,” added the Argentine government in its statement.

Milei also extended his “condolences to the family, especially to Yarden Bibas, the children’s father, who after suffering the torment of being kidnapped for 484 days is now facing his worst nightmare.

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