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Hamas hostages released a video of 19-year-old soldier Liri Albag and told the Israeli government to secure her release.
Liri Albag, Hamas captive, was spotted in a video released by the Palestinian militant group. (IMAGE: X)
The family of 19-year-old Liri Albag appealed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli politicians and world leaders to take decisions thinking that their own children are being held hostages after Hamas released a video of the teenager who has been held in Gaza since her kidnapping on October 7, 2023.
“We appeal to the prime minister, world leaders and all decision-makers: it’s time to take decisions as if it were your own children there,” the family said in a statement.
Albag was 18 when she was captured by Palestinian militants at the Nahal Oz base on the Gaza border along with six other women conscripts, five of whom remain in captivity.
The armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, released a video on Saturday of the Israeli hostage. In the undated, three-and-a-half-minute video recording, 19-year-old soldier Liri Albag called in Hebrew for the Israeli government to secure her release.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a campaign group for relatives of those abducted, said Albag’s family has not authorised publication of the video.
Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad have released a number of videos of Israeli hostages in their custody during nearly 15 months of fighting in Gaza.
The militants seized 251 hostages during the 2023 attack, of whom 96 remain in Gaza. The Israeli military says 34 of those are dead.
Hamas said late on Friday that indirect negotiations with Israel for a truce and hostage release deal were to resume in Qatar that same night. There has since been no update.
Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been engaged in months of effort that have failed to end the war.
Weekly demonstrations organised by the hostages forum, the latest scheduled in Tel Aviv on Saturday, have kept up the pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a deal to free the hostages.
The prime minister’s critics in Israel have accused him of stalling on a deal.
The forum said the latest video was “firm and incontestable proof of the urgency of bringing the hostages home”.
On Thursday, Netanyahu’s office said he had authorised Israeli negotiators to join the latest round of truce and hostage release talks in Qatar.
- Location :
Jerusalem, Undefined
