The Bibas Family

Yarden later said the terrorists began breaching the house. He asked Shiri whether they should fight or surrender, then fired toward the entrance. (2)(3)

The terrorists fired back. Yarden saw bullets passing through the safe-room door toward Ariel's bed, where they had told him to hide underneath. He stopped fighting, put down his gun and shouted that there were children inside. (2)

The terrorists pulled him to his feet. One indicated that only Yarden would be taken. Yarden pointed repeatedly at Shiri and the boys to make sure he understood. The answer was again: only him. (2)

Years earlier, after leaving for work during an argument without kissing Shiri goodbye, Yarden had promised her that he would never leave home that way again. As he was ordered out of the safe room, he asked for permission to kiss his family. (2)

He kissed Shiri, Ariel and Kfir and told them he loved them. Yarden later said he believed he was being taken outside to be executed. Instead, he was abducted. (2)

Yarden was taken into Gaza on a motorcycle. Footage filmed after he reached Gaza shows him bleeding from the head, surrounded by people filming him as he is struck and pushed through the crowd. (4)(5)

Yarden did not know that Shiri and the boys had also been abducted. Released hostage Adina Moshe later said that when she encountered him underground, he still believed they had remained in the safe room. (1)

His captors at one point told him that Shiri and the children were alive and had been seen in Tel Aviv. Later, they forced another hostage to tell him they were dead while they filmed his reaction. Hamas later released the video. (7)

Yarden later said he almost fainted. He began trying to learn enough of his captors' language to recognize when they were lying, holding on to the possibility that what they had told him about his family was false. (3)

Yarden spent most of his captivity underground, where Israeli strikes shook the tunnels around him and he feared the structure could collapse. (4)

On February 20, four coffins were transferred from Gaza. Ariel and Kfir were identified. But the female body delivered as Shiri was not hers and did not match any Israeli hostage. (9)

Shiri's remains were transferred separately the following day and identified.

The Israeli military said forensic findings and intelligence showed that Ariel and Kfir had been murdered by their captors and had not died in an Israeli airstrike. It said the boys had been killed with their captors' bare hands. (10)

Hamas and the Mujahideen Brigades had claimed that an Israeli strike killed the family. Amnesty International later said the publicly available evidence was insufficient for it to independently determine the cause of their deaths. The precise circumstances of Shiri's death have not been publicly established. (5)

Shiri, Ariel and Kfir were buried together on February 26, 2025. (11)

When Yarden later returned to the house in Nir Oz, the safe-room door was punctured by bullets. There was blood on the floor, toys and children's belongings remained in the rooms, and some family photographs were gone. (2)

He said he had become afraid of forgetting ordinary memories of Shiri and the boys. He chose not to take objects marked by bullets or blood because he did not want October 7 to replace those memories. He took some of Ariel and Kfir's toys instead. (2)