First anniversary concerns: baby kidnapped by Hamas still alive?

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More than three months after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, the first anniversary of the youngest hostage of the Islamist-Palestinian organization is being commemorated. “We think about them every day, every second, every minute,” Jossi Schneider said of his family who were deported to the Gaza Strip – including baby Kfir Bibas. Meanwhile, heavy fighting between the Israeli army and Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip continued unabated on Thursday.

During the October 7 attack, Hamas kidnapped siblings Kfir and Ariel Bibas and their parents Shiri and Jarden from Kibbutz Nir Oz. The images of her kidnapping have become one of the symbols of the major Hamas attack on Israel, in which the Islamists killed 1,140 people and took about 250 hostage in the Gaza Strip. In Kibbutz Nir Oz alone, one in four of the 400 residents was murdered or kidnapped.

According to Israeli information, there are still 132 hostages in the Gaza Strip, including Kfir Bibas and his brother Ariel (4). The relatives hope that the baby and his family are still alive. In late November, Hamas said the child, along with his mother and brother, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. Israel has not confirmed the information; Currently, 27 hostages are presumed dead. In Tel Aviv, hundreds of Israelis released orange balloons on Thursday to mark Kfir’s first birthday.

The Israeli government is under great pressure to secure the release of the hostages. “The victory will take many months, but we are determined to achieve it,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (74) said on Thursday.

There has been war for more than three months

Israel “will not settle for anything less than a complete victory,” the head of government emphasized. This means “the elimination of the terrorist leaders, the destruction of Hamas’s operational and military capabilities, the return of our hostages home, the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip” with full Israeli security control over everything entering Palestinian territory.

After mediation by Qatar and France, medicines for the care of Hamas hostages arrived in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday evening. At the same time, humanitarian aid supplies for the Palestinian civilian population were also brought to the Palestinian territory, as announced by the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The supply of medicine and aid was negotiated for weeks with the mediation of Qatar and France. An agreement between Israel and Hamas was announced on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Hamas imposed new conditions for the delivery of the medication. The condition is that the trucks carrying the medicines are allowed to enter the Palestinian territory “without Israeli inspection,” Musa Abu Marsuk of the Hamas Politburo explained on X.

The war between Israel and Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the US and EU, has been going on for more than three months. In response to the October 7 attack, Israel declared war on Hamas and launched a large-scale military operation in the Gaza Strip. More than 24,620 people have been killed there since then, according to information from the Hamas Health Ministry, which cannot be independently verified.

Death after Israeli airstrikes

Hamas said 93 people were killed in overnight Israeli airstrikes on Thursday evening. The Hamas-controlled Health Ministry said 16 of them were killed in the southern city of Rafah alone. There was also mass shelling in Khan Yunis and other places in the center of the Gaza Strip, the report said.

Images from the AFP news agency showed black smoke over Khan Yunis the morning after the airstrikes. According to Israeli information, leading Hamas representatives and the hostages they kidnapped are believed to be in the Gaza Strip’s second-largest city.

During a “targeted attack” in southern Khan Yunis, Israeli forces said they encountered a headquarters of the “South Battalion of the Hamas Khan Yunis Brigade” with numerous weapons and intelligence documents. Moreover, “dozens of terrorists were eliminated” during heavy fighting. On Thursday, the army also announced that it had advanced to Khan Yunis, the southernmost point of its operation in the Gaza Strip so far. (SDA)

Source: Blick