In a grim spectacle, Hamas paraded coffins, said to contain the bodies of four hostages, including a baby and a toddler, before a banner showing images of their smiling faces and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu portrayed as a vampire, on a stage in Khan Younis, Gaza. The coffins were then transferred to the Red Cross to deliver to Israel after more than 500 days of anguish.

The youngest of the hostages, Kfir Bibas, was 9 months old when he was kidnapped along with his brother Ariel, 4, and mother Shiri Silberman Bibas, 32. Hamas also returned the body of one of the oldest hostages, Oded Lifshitz, 85. All were taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023.

In Khan Younis on Thursday morning, a banner displayed the smiling faces of the Bibas family and Lifshitz with the text “War Criminal Netanyahu and his army killed them with missiles and Zionist warplanes.” A second banner reading “we never forgave nor forgot, ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ was our promise.”

Hamas locked the coffins and gave the Red Cross keys that do not fit the locks, Kan Radio reported.

Health Minister Uriel Buso told Israeli news outlet Walla on Wednesday that the identification of the released hostages’ bodies could take time. “The process can take a short time to a very long time, since we do not have accurate information about the condition of the bodies,” he said. “The most important thing is that we receive a clear identification, that we can ascertain the cause of death as much as possible, and that we bring them for burial in Israel,” Buso said.

The photo of Kfir with a pink stuffed elephant, used in Hamas’ cruel display, and video from Oct. 7 of Shiri clutching the two boys under a blanket with a look of terror on her face have become some of the most indelible images of this war, underscoring the brutality of Hamas’ massacres across Israel’s south in which over 1,200 people were killed and 251 initially taken hostage. 

The boys’ father, Yarden Bibas, was kidnapped separately, while trying to defend his family, and released earlier this month. Shiri’s parents, Yossi and Margit Silberman, both in their 60s, were murdered in the Hamas attacks.

The color orange, symbolizing the Bibas boys’ red hair, has been incorporated in many demonstrations to free the hostages, as has Ariel’s love of Batman.

Security footage of Shiri Bibas and her sons released by the IDF early last year showed them wrapped in a sheet and forced into a car. IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said at the time that the three were held hostage by the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement, a smaller terrorist group in Gaza.

Hamas said in November 2023 that Bibas and her children had been killed, broadcasting a video of Yarden Bibas crying after learning of their fates. Israel, however, was unable to confirm their deaths until Wednesday, though Hagari said last month that there were “grave concerns about their fate.” 

Lifshitz was kidnapped from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz with his wife, Yocheved, 85, who was freed later that month. They were among the founders of the kibbutz. Lifshitz was a journalist who wrote for the socialist newspaper Al Hamishmar for decades and whose last published work was an op-ed about a 1948 battle in a kibbutz in Israel’s south. Lifshitz was an activist who opposed Israeli settlements in Gaza when they were being built in the 1970s and drove Palestinians to hospitals in Israel.

After the families were informed that their loved ones’ bodies would be returned, the Bibas family said they would refrain from eulogizing until the identification procedures are completed.

The Lifshitz family said they “prayed for a different outcome. However, until we receive absolute certainty, our journey is not over, and even afterwards we will continue to fight until the last hostage is returned.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday night that “the heart of the entire nation is broken. My own heart is broken, and all of the world’s heart should be broken because this demonstrates who we are dealing with, what we are dealing with, with such monsters.”

“We are grieving, we are in pain, but we are also determined to ensure that such a thing never happens again,” he added.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in an address at the Great Synagogue in Rome that the return of the hostages’ bodies highlights that “it is our highest duty to bring every last one of our hostage brothers home” and that “we really are dealing with absolute and cruel evil that murders, tortures, and kidnaps mothers and babies, motivated by a murderous jihadist ideology.”