From Shiri Bibas’s cousin: We hold Hamas solely responsible for returning the family alive
Jimmy Miller, a cousin of Shiri Bibas, says the family holds Hamas responsible for the well-being of the family, after Hamas claimed earlier today that Shiri, four-year-old Ariel and baby Kfir are dead.
The IDF says it is examining the veracity of Hamas’s claim, which asserted that the three were killed in an IDF bombardment. The claim has not been independently verified and Gaza terrorists have made previous false claims about the ostensible deaths of hostages.
“The IDF has updated us about this information,” Miller tells Channel 12 regarding the Hamas claim.
“Hamas abducted them alive. Hamas is solely responsible for their well-being. Hamas must return them to us alive. We’re not interested in whether they transferred them to somebody else or to some other group. Hamas is solely responsible for returning them to us alive, healthy and intact… Make no mistake.”
He also cites Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as responsible for their well-being.
He says the family “are waiting for an official announcement” from the IDF as to whether “it’s true or not, or another kind of trick that Hamas is playing on us.”
He stresses that the family has seen the video of Shiri and her two sons being abducted alive from Kibbutz Nir Oz, “and we have absolutely no doubt that they reached Gaza alive. And we want to see them back here alive, the sooner the better.”
Miller also notes that father Yarden was abducted separately to Gaza, taken on a motorbike, and seen in video being beaten on the head with hammers en route.
“We are not sure that they reached Gaza together; we think [the terrorists] separated them,” he adds.
He says the family gets up every morning hoping they will be returned in each day’s releases, and have been terribly disappointed that they have not been.
