Hamas to Free Yarden Bibas, Israeli Father Whose Family Was Taken Hostage

The family of four were among more than 180 residents of kibbutz Nir Oz, 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, an onslaught that has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, who do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

More than 1,750 people in Israel have been killed in the war, about 1,200 of them on the day of the Oct. 7 attack, according to Israeli officials. The toll includes more than 890 members of the Israeli military forces.

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.

All other children seized in the Oct. 7 attack were released in a previous cease-fire deal.

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.

Mr. Bibas was abducted separately from his family.

In the early morning hours before his capture, he texted his sister, Ofri Bibas-Levy, to tell her about incoming rocket fire, according to an interview she gave to Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster. Later, he texted her that militants had entered the camp. He had a gun, he told her, but the militants had automatic rifles.

He then described scenes of clashes on the kibbutz and his fear that his two young sons would not be able to keep quiet.

“It feels like the end,” he wrote her at 9:10 in the morning.

Video from the Oct. 7 attack on Nir Oz revealed images of militants drilling open the Bibas family’s front door.

Sometime before her brother was captured, Ms. Bibas-Levy told Kan, he texted her and their parents that he loved them. At 9:45 in the morning, he wrote: “They’re in.”

Ms. Bibas-Levy told Kan that the first she learned of her brother’s Oct. 7 kidnapping when she saw a video of militants abducting him a few days later.