Israel on Tuesday confirmed that a Nepalese Hindu – Bipin Joshi – was among the four dead hostages whose bodies were handed over by the Palestinian militant outfit Hamas on Monday as part of the Donald Trump-brokered Gaza ceasefire.
Bipin Joshi, a Nepali hostage who was kidnapped in the deadly October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel(via REUTERS)
While the remains of four deceased were handed back by the Hamas, Israel also welcomed 20 surviving hostages on Monday.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said in a statement that the body of the “Nepali hero who saved several lives during the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel” will soon be returned to his family for proper burial.
Who was Bipin Joshi?
The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, when its militants carried killed 1,219 people, most of them civilians. The Hamas militants took 251 hostages to Gaza.
Bipin Joshi, 23, was abducted from a shelter in Kibbutz Alumim by Hamas on that along with several others.
“Bipin was abducted at the age of 23 from a shelter in Kibbutz Alumim by Hamas. It is assessed that he was murdered in captivity during the first months of the war,” IDF said in a statement on social media on Tuesday.
Bipin Joshi, a student, was in Israel under country’s Learn and Earn Programme and was working at the Alumim kibbutz with 16 other Nepalis when Hamas launched its assault, according to the Kathmandu Post.
Ten Nepalis were killed, five were injured, and one managed to escape the attack unhurt, the Kathmandu Post reported.
Bipin Joshi’s friend, Bibhusha Adhikari, who returned after the deadly attack, had earlier shared how he saved lives of 17 people amid grenades thrown into his room.
Adhikari said that two grenades were thrown into Joshi’s room, and he picked up the grenades and threw them back at the assailants. He saved the lives of 17 people, including six working on the farm, according to the Himalayan Times.
“If he had hesitated back then, we would not have been alive,” the report quoted Adhikari as saying.
Israeli officials reportedly briefed Nepali ambassador to Israel, Dhan Prasad Pandit, and Joshi’s family over the death in a virtual meeting on Monday, The Kathmandu Post reported.
The Israel military named two of the victims as Guy Iluz, an Israeli national, and Bipin Joshi, an agriculture student from Nepal.
The names of the other two hostages have not yet been released at the request of their families, the statement added.