JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Human remains were found Wednesday evening in the Dor Tza’ir (young people) neighborhood of Kfar Aza and were taken to the forensic institute for identification.

A fragment of a skull was discovered, and authorities are examining whether it belongs to Nirel Zini, a former officer in the Givati Brigade and a resident of the neighborhood whose head was severed during the October 7 attack and has never been recovered. The discovery was made by his brother, Uri, while visiting the site. He told Ynet that he hopes the remains are indeed part of his brother’s body.

On October 10, 2015, two and a half weeks before celebrating his 23rd birthday, Zini, who was then an officer in Givati, was critically wounded during an operational activity in Hebron. But that did not stop him, and even before he had recovered from the injury, after one of his soldiers was stabbed in a terror attack in Jerusalem, he escaped from the hospital and returned to service in the IDF.

Zini served as a platoon commander in Givati, deputy company commander in the Bardelas Battalion, later commander of the reconnaissance company and commander of the mobility company of the Paran Brigade. Finally, after 10 years of service, and because of the severe injury that had accompanied him since 2015, he was forced to end his service with the rank of major.

Since the injury in 2015, Zini held a thanksgiving meal every year on October 10, and on that same day in 2023 he had planned to propose marriage to his partner, Niv Raviv, whom he had met in the army eight years earlier and with whom he lived in Kfar Aza. But only three days earlier, on October 7, 2023, the massacre carried out by Hamas terrorists in Israel took place.

At 10:04 a.m. on October 7, Nirel sent his family what would become his final message: “I’ll update you. They’re here. I’m putting down the phone. Pray.” He was holding a knife in one hand and the safe-room door in the other while Niv hid under a bed. When the attackers entered the house, Nirel tried to draw their attention away from her by fleeing the burning home. Both were ultimately murdered. Their bodies were located six days later after they had initially been listed as missing.

The family’s ordeal continued after his death. Before the funeral, relatives were not allowed to identify the body and were told that, given its condition, it was better not to do so. Months later, during a briefing with investigators from Lahav 433, the family was shown footage from the opening of Nirel’s body bag at the Shura military base and learned for the first time that Hamas terrorists had decapitated him.

According to his father, Amir Zini, neither the family nor any official representatives had informed them of this fact before the burial. He later wrote a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu, saying that no one had prepared them for such a revelation and questioning why they were never told before their son’s burial.

The family also discovered that no official search was underway for Nirel’s missing head. They began organizing searches themselves in the Dor Tza’ir neighborhood, locating the exact area where his body had been recovered and working with volunteers from the Israel Antiquities Authority and military search teams. They brought excavation equipment, sifted debris, and submitted hundreds of findings to the forensic institute.

Many of the recovered fragments were identified as animal bones, while numerous human bone fragments and skull pieces reportedly yielded no usable DNA. The family says they were later denied permission to send some of the remains to foreign laboratories that might have been able to conduct additional testing.

In a letter to Netanyahu, Amir Zini also referenced reports that hundreds of bags containing unidentified human remains remained at the Shura base and criticized decisions allegedly made by a special government committee not to inform families about the condition of their loved ones’ bodies or about the discovery of additional remains.

Now, nearly three years after the massacre, the Zini family is waiting for the forensic examination results to determine whether the newly discovered skull fragment is part of Nirel’s remains. The answer could finally provide some measure of closure after years of searching and uncertainty.