Families of dead Israelis yet to be returned demand action

When Tamir Adar left his wife and two children, Asaf, seven, and Neta, three, in their home's secure room on 7 October 2023 he told them: "Two minutes, I'll be back."

- Daniel Boffey

He was going to join the Nir Oz kibbutz's three other "first responders" after an alarm, but could not have known that hundreds of Hamas gunmen had broken through the community's perimeter fence.

"Until this day, his son is still asking 'when?'", said Tamir's brother Nir, 36. "He says, 'He told me, he's coming back'... We want to close the story."

Tamir, 38, was shot in the stomach during a firefight with 150 Hamas militants at the kibbutz just 4 miles from Gaza.

The job of his volunteer team was to hold off any attackers for 20 minutes to allow the Israel Defense Forces time to arrive. The soldiers didn't arrive. Tamir and his friends held them for two hours.

At 8.26am, 14 minutes before they were overcome, Tamir sent a text message to his wife: "Don't open the door. Even if it's me." Badly injured, Tamir was initially left for dead. A second Hamas wave that brought the total number of gunmen up to 500, took him back to the southern city of Khan Younis in Gaza. His death that day was confirmed in January last year.

"Now we're sitting here two years later and I have more details, but we didn't know anything for three months," Nir said.

Nir lived opposite his brother and next door to Shiri Bibas, 32, and her sons Kfir, nine months, and Ariel, four, who also died in Gaza. After the return of the remains, Israel said a forensic analysis showed the children had been killed with "bare hands" in November 2023. Hamas said the family had died in an Israeli airstrike.