Human remains were discovered this evening (Wednesday) in the Dor Tzair neighborhood of Kfar Aza and transferred for examination at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute. Among the findings was part of a skull, and investigators are now checking whether it belongs to the late Nirel Zini, a Givati officer who was murdered in the October 7 massacre and whose head had not been located since that bloody day.
Zini, who served in the IDF for about a decade, was critically wounded during operational activity in Hebron in 2015 but returned to service following a lengthy rehabilitation. On October 7, 2023, he was at his home in Kfar Aza together with his partner, the late Niv Raviv. At 10:04 a.m., he sent his family a message: “I’ll update you. They’re here. I’m putting down the phone. Pray."
According to his family, Zini tried to distract the terrorists in order to allow his partner to hide, but the two were murdered. Their bodies were found only six days later, and during a meeting with investigators from Lahav 433, the family learned that Nirel had been beheaded during the massacre.
Family members claimed that they had not been informed of the details before the funeral, and that for a long period, no official body acted to locate Nirel’s head. His father, Amir Zini, contacted various officials and requested that his son be recognized as a fallen soldier who had been abducted to Gaza, but according to him, the request was rejected.
Since then, the family, with the assistance of volunteers and experts, began carrying out independent searches among the ruins of the kibbutz. Hundreds of findings were transferred for examination at the forensic institute, but according to the family, some were classified as animal bones or as findings from which DNA could not be extracted.
In a letter sent to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the father claimed that the family was forced to deal alone with the searches and with the lack of information from the authorities.
Now, nearly three years after the massacre, the family is awaiting the test results that will determine whether the skull fragment that was found belongs to the late Nirel.