HAMAS – The youngest Israeli hostage held by Hamas will turn one years old this week – after spending a quarter of his life in captivity in Gaza.
The youngest Israeli hostage
Little Kfir Bibas is still believed to be among more than 130 hostages who continue to be held in Hamas underground tunnels in the warzone.
Yesterday (Sunday} marks 100 days since Hamas terrorists stormed over the border and launched a terror attack that killed 1,200 Israelis, sparking a conflict that threatens to erupt into a full-scale regional war.
Footage filmed by Hamas showed Kfir’s desperate mother Shiri, 30, clinging to her red-headed baby and four-year-old son Ariel as they were led away by gunmen.
Word from a family member
Her cousin Yosi said on Sunday: ‘Did you see the video? Shiri is screaming but she isn’t making a sound. There is no voice. Did you see that? She was so scared.’
Yosi showed our reporters around Bibas’s modest family home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, which is frozen in time from that dreadful day when Hamas raided southern Israel.
As he opened the front door, Yosi warned us of the stench of the family’s pet dog Tony who was shot dead by Hamas gunmen.
Bullet holes riddle the walls. The baby’s mattress is splattered with blood.
The boys‘ tiny shoes are neatly piled in a corner, and their toy trucks are discarded in the bathroom.
Relatives in Israel do not truly know if the Bibas family is still alive.
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In November, Hamas released a cruel propaganda video of the father Yarden, 37, sobbing after the terrorists informed him that the rest of his family had been killed in an Israeli air strike on the tunnels in Gaza.
Is there still hope?
However, the Israeli government has not confirmed they are dead – and so there is still hope.
More than 100 hostages were released during a ceasefire two months ago but the Bibas were not among them.
Little Kfir turns one on Thursday.Yosi, 45, said: ‘We do not know what state they’re in but I have hope they are alive. We have heard from the returned hostages that Yarden was in a really bad way.
‘I dread to think about little Kfir, if he comes back will he be OK? Does he even get nutrition to develop? How does Shiri manage to keep him from crying? We heard that hostages had to stay in silence. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
