The family of a baby who is the youngest hostage in Gaza have called for his release along with that of his four-year-old brother.
Kfir Bibas, who is 10 months old, has spent nearly a fifth of his life in captivity after being kidnapped from his home in a southern Israeli kibbutz during the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 240 taken hostage.
He was abducted from Nir Oz along with his older brother, Ariel, their mother, Shiri, and father, Yarden. On Tuesday, Israeli authorities said they believed the family had been handed over by Hamas to another Palestinian militant group in a possible complication of efforts to free him.
Kfir was the youngest of about 30 children who were taken hostage. Under a current temporary ceasefire, Hamas has released women, children and teenagers, but the infant has not been included on the lists of those to be freed, according to his family.
His fate has become a rallying cry for Israelis seeking the release of all the hostages. A demonstration in support of the Bibas family was held in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.
“There is no precedent for something like this, for a baby who was kidnapped when he was nine months old,” Eylon Keshet, a cousin of Kfir’s father, told reporters. “Is baby Kfir the enemy of Hamas?”
Video of the incident showed a terrified Shiri clutching the children in a blanket as they were bundled into captivity.
The boys’ father appears in other images to have been wounded.
Israel’s chief military spokesperson, R Adm Daniel Hagari, said in a briefing on Tuesday that the family were being held by a different Palestinian faction, but said that Hamas bore responsibility for their safety. Another military spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Avichay Adraee, said the family was in the area of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. Hamas has not given the locations or condition of the estimated 170 people it still holds.
His sister, Ofri Bibas Levy, asked why it was taking so long for the boys to be freed. “Maybe it’s part of a psychological war against us,” she said. “My hope is that they don’t see them as a trophy.”
The baby was only crawling when he was seized, but is likely to have reached the stage when he starts using objects to stand up and move around, his aunt said.
In Israel and beyond, Kfir has become a symbol of the brutality of Hamas’ attack, which triggered an Israeli military offensive that has killed more than 15,000 people in Gaza according to health authorities in the Hamas-run strip.
Former prime minister of Israel Naftali Bennett has brought Kfir’s picture to international media studios and brandished it on camera.
When Kfir was not freed on Monday, his family released a statement saying that “the understanding that we won’t receive the embrace we so wished for has left us without words”.
In what appeared to be an effort to ramp up pressure on Hamas to free the Bibas boys and their mother before the truce expires on Wednesday, Israel’s military spokesperson and the spokesperson for Arabic media both mentioned Kfir in separate statements.
More than 100 people gathered in Tel Aviv at the Hostages and Missing Persons Square on Tuesday afternoon to release orange balloons as they demanded the release of the family.
“They have been 53 days in Gaza, and we don’t know who is hugging them, or giving them baths, or calming them down if they are crying,” Bibas Levy said during a press conference.
Jimmy Miller, a cousin, told Channel 12 TV: “Kfir is only 10 months old. He is a child who still doesn’t even know how to say ‘Mommy’. He still isn’t eating solid food. He doesn’t have the ability to survive there.”
