Israel claimed on Monday that Hamas is slow-rolling the release of its youngest hostage, a 10-month-old baby who was kidnapped on Oct. 7 alongside his parents and 4-year-old brother.
The Israel Defense Forces said Kfir Bibas had been transferred to the custody of a separate Palestinian group in the city of Khan Yunis, and is likely being used as leverage in Hamas and Israel’s talks to extend the current ceasefire agreement. The city, located in southern Gaza, is widely expected to be the site of a renewed bombardment campaign once the current ceasefire agreement ends later this week.
Arabic spokesman for the IDF Avichay Adraee also appeared to confirm that the Bibas family—Kfir, his brother Ariel, and their parents Jordan and Shiri—were also passed off to another terror group in Khan Yunis.
“In Hamas prisons, infants under one year old who have not seen the light of day for more than 50 days are detained. Hamas treats them as if they were spoils and sometimes hands them over to other terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip,” Adraee wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“For example, the Bibas family, the two red-haired children ‘The Reds,’” who were kidnapped from their home in Nir Oz by a member of the Hamas terrorist organization and are being held in the Khan Yunis area by one of the Palestinian factions.”
International security analyst Michael Horowitz told U.K.-based newspaper The Telegraph that he believes the family is now being held by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular Marxist-Leninist revolutionary organization recognized by the U.S. government as a terrorist group.
Bibas’ aunt, Noah Abrahams, also told the outlet that the decision to move the baby amounted to “just more psychological torture.”
Israel maintains that all hostages remain the responsibility of Hamas even if they have been passed off to other groups.