Kfir Bibas, the 10-month-old baby taken hostage by Hamas during the October 7th terror attacks, before being handed to a separate Palestinian terror group for use as “leverage” in ceasefire talks, has been killed, according to Hamas.
The group said that Kfir, alongside Ariel, his four-year-old brother, and their mother Shira, had been killed by an Israeli airstrike. The IDF is “assessing the accuracy of the information,” while family members said in a statement issued under their name that “we are waiting for the information to be confirmed and hopefully refuted by military officials.”
This news emerged at around the same time that Israeli and Hamas officials agreed to extend the temporary pause to allow more hostages—and, on the Israeli side, prisoners—to be released. As 30 Palestinian prisoners were set free on Wednesday evening, Israel celebrated the return of 13-year-old Gali Tarshanksy, whose 16-year-old brother was murdered on October 7th; 73-year-old Irena Tati, and others.
Despite pressure from Joe Biden to show restraint in the ongoing war, Benjamin Netanyahu said that fighting would continue at the nearest opportunity:
There is no way we are not going back to fighting until the end. This is my policy, the entire cabinet stands behind it, the soldiers stand behind it, the people stand behind it.
This determination to carry on fighting is likely to have been bolstered by a terror attack on Thursday morning in Jerusalem. Early reports say that the attack was perpetrated by two Palestinian gunmen and left three people dead and another six injured.
