Yarden Bibas, father and husband of a kidnapped Argentine family, has been released after being held hostage for 484 days by Hamas.

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed on Saturday that Bibas was handed to the Red Cross as part of the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel. IDF also released footage of Bibas reuniting with his parents and sister at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel. 

Two other hostages, Ofer Kalderon (54) and US citizen Keith Siegel (65) were freed in the same exchange, which also included the release of 183 Palestinian detainees by Israel, according to the Red Cross. 

Bibas spent more than a year in captivity since he was kidnapped from the Nir Or kibbutz on October 7, 2023. He was taken along with his wife Shiri and their two children Ariel and Kfir, who was 9 months old at the time, the youngest of the 251 people held hostage. At least 20 of them were Argentine citizens. 

Hamas announced in November 2023 that Bibas’ family was killed during an Israeli airstrike, but the Israeli authorities could not independently confirm the claim. In February 2024, the Israeli military said it had found footage of Shiri, Kfir and Ariel being moved by militants in the Khan Younis area of Gaza, proving that they had got to the strip alive, but the date of the footage was unclear.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the three hostages in a statement.

“Welcome back home Yarden Bibas, Ofer Kalderon and Keith Siegel,” he wrote in a post on X. “Our thoughts are with Shiri, Ariel, Kfir and all the hostages. We will continue to work to bring them all home,” he added.

“We have been searching for them for a long time, tracing their tracks and investigating what happened to them. Even in these very days and at these very hours, we are again demanding information from the mediators about their condition,” said Gal Hirsch, Office coordinator for hostages and missing persons, at the Sheba Medical Center.

“A quarter of our heart has returned to us after 15 long months,” read a statement issued on Saturday by Bibas’ family, in which they conveyed the relief of welcoming Yarden to a home they nevertheless described as “incomplete”.

“We will take a few days to reunite with Yarden, but we continue with hope and the call for the return of Shiri, the children, and all the hostages.”

Hamas killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023. In the ensuing war, Israeli Defense Forces have killed at least 46,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.