\n<\/p>\n
They became a potent symbol of Israel\u2019s hostage crisis after video from the Hamas-led 2023 attack showed Palestinian militants leading away a distraught mother clutching her two small red-haired sons. Another video showed the father of the same family being spirited away to Gaza on a motorcycle, his head bloodied.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Hamas said the 35-year-old father, Yarden Bibas, will be one of three male hostages to be freed on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Israelis are still anxiously awaiting word of his wife, Shiri, and their two children, Ariel, now 5, and Kfir, who was 9 months old at the time of his capture \u2014 the youngest hostage taken into Gaza. Last week, Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, seemed to brace the public for the likelihood that they would not come out alive, saying<\/a> the military was \u201cgravely concerned\u201d for the mother and children.<\/p>\n Hamas claimed last year that Ms. Bibas and her children had been killed by an Israeli airstrike, but Israeli officials have never confirmed that. Several hostages were killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, accidentally shot or possibly as the result of Israeli airstrikes. The military has also said some<\/a> civilian hostages may have been killed by Israeli forces as they were being kidnapped on the day of the Oct. 7 attack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Bibas family has been through \u201ca twisted reality from hell,\u201d a relative, Yifat Zailer, said in an interview<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The family of four were among more than 180 residents of kibbutz Nir Oz<\/a>, a farming community in southern Israel, who were killed or abducted in the Oct. 7 attack. Since then, the family became the faces of a national trauma that sparked a fierce Israeli war in Gaza aimed at eradicating Hamas.<\/p>\n Throughout more than a year of waiting, hostage families and their supporters have carried orange balloons and worn orange shirts in honor of the missing children and their ginger-colored hair. They have held large events to mark the first two birthdays of Kfir, who has never celebrated one out of captivity.<\/p>\n All other children seized in the Oct. 7 attack were released in a previous cease-fire deal.<\/p>\n Israeli officials pressed Hamas negotiators in recent days for more clarity on Ms. Bibas and her children, according to Israeli media. As a female civilian with children, they were expected to be released in the initial stages of the cease-fire deal, before soldiers or men, if they were alive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Bibas was abducted separately from his family.<\/p>\n