Gaza:
Israelis released from captivity in Gaza gathered again Tuesday in their destroyed border village to hold a solemn first birthday ceremony for the child of a family still held hostage.
Kfir Bibas was eight months old when Hamas-led Palestinian gunmen stormed Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7 as part of a cross-border killing spree in southern Israel, becoming the youngest of some 240 people returned as prisoners to the Gaza Strip.
Hamas has said Kfir, his four-year-old brother Ariel and their mother Shiri were killed in the Israeli offensive that followed, while their father, Yarden, survived. But in the absence of Israeli confirmation, relatives and friends back home have refused to abandon hope for the entire family's safe recovery.
A bower of ginger balloons – a nod to Kfir's hair color – stood in Nir Oz's abandoned kindergarten, and his photos indicated places at a table where revelers should have sat.
“We're celebrating a birthday for a child who's not there. We make a cake for him, we put balloons and pictures and blessings and stuff, and he's not there,” Shiri's cousin, Yosi Shnaider, told Reuters. “It's crazy.”
Kfir would have turned one year old on Thursday, after which he would have spent a third of his life as a hostage. Meanwhile, Nir Oz has been frozen in time and trauma, with more than a quarter of its residents killed or captured and survivors forced to flee.
Israel recovered about half of the hostages during a ceasefire in November, including Nir Oz resident Sharon Alony Cunio and her 3-year-old twin daughters Emma and Julie. However, Cunio's husband remains incommunicado in Gaza, along with 131 other hostages.
Concerns about their fate haunt a country that, after the worst attack in its history, has plunged into the grim determination of war — especially as Israeli officials, citing various sources of information, say at least 25 hostages have died in captivity.
“I can't sleep. I suffer from nightmares. The girls keep asking about their father,” said Cunio, who visited her now burned-out house in the previously peaceful agricultural collective.
“I wake up in the morning with only one purpose: David made me promise him that I will fight for him. That I will scream his despair to the world because he is unable to do so.”
Hamas on Monday broadcast a video claiming to show the bodies of two other hostages it said were killed in an Israeli attack. Without immediately confirming their deaths, Israel disputed the Hamas account in the video, labeling it “psychological torture.”
Qatari and Egyptian mediators have tried to broker a new truce that could free more hostages, even as Israel continues its devastating offensive to destroy Hamas and Palestinian militants vow to fight on.
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