The family of Yossi Sharabi, who was taken hostage by Hamas from Kibbutz Be’eri and died while in captivity, was informed on Friday of the details of investigation conducted by the IDF regarding the circumstances of his death.
The body of Sharabi, 53, is still being held by Hamas, but already in mid-January the IDF had collected enough intelligence to confirm that he was not alive.
The IDF estimates that Sharabi could have been killed as a result of an Israel Air Force attack on a building near where he was held, likely alongside Itay Svirsky of Be’eri, who was murdered by Hamas a few days later.
According to the investigation, the army identified a terrorist cell which was hiding in a building that was attacked in the town of Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip.
The squad in question was organized with many weapons and preparing to attack IDF troops. Heavy weaponry was fired at the building and destroyed it. The building collapsed, probably on the squad that was inside, but it also caused damage to a nearby building where Sharabi was being held and it is believed that this is how he was killed.
Sharabi, the marketing manager of Be’eri Printing Press, was kidnapped to Gaza together with his brother Eli Sharabi who is still in captivity, and Ofir Engel, the boyfriend of his daughter Yuval, who was freed in a hostage deal after 54 days in Gaza. Yossi is survived by three daughters - Yuval, Ofir and Oren - and his wife Nira.
Kibbutz Be'eri announced last month that Svirsky and Sharabi had been murdered after having been held hostage in Gaza for about three months. The announcement came two days after they were seen in a Hamas propaganda video together with another hostage, Noa Argamani.
Hamas terrorists claimed that they would publish information regarding the fate of the three hostages the next day. When a second video was released a day later, Hamas claimed that Svirsky and Sharabi were killed in an Israeli air strike.
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)