Tens of thousands of mourners 26 February lined the streets as the funeral procession for Shiri Bibas and her two children, Ariel and Kfir, made its way nearly 40 miles from Rishon Lezion in central Israel to Tsoher Regional Cemetery in southern Israel.
The video of Shiri Bibas clutching her boys as armed Hamas terrorists surrounded her and took her hostage became one of the best known images of the struggle to free the hostages.
The three, murdered by their captors, were buried in a single casket in the cemetery near their home in Nir Oz Kibbutz, where they were taken 7 October, 2023.
The body of Shiri Bibas was eventually returned 21 February, with the Bibas family confirming 22 February that it was her body. She was not returned on 20 February as promised.
The four returned that day included the body of 83-year-old peace activist Oded Lifshitz, the bodies of the two Bibas boys, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 9 months, and the body of an unidentified woman.
The boys “were murdered by terrorists in cold blood … with bare hands,” an IDF spokesman said 21 February.
The Reuters news agency reported that Hamas claimed that their mothers’ remains got mixed up with other bodies because of IDF bombings, but this was not confirmed by Israel.