YV, with AFP
05/01/2025 at 09:59
The armed wing of Hamas released a new video on Saturday of one of the people kidnapped on October 7, 2023 during the attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement carried out in Israel from the Gaza Strip.
Her name is Liri Albag, she is now 19 years old, and was kidnapped on October 7, 2023 while she was doing her military service at the Nahal Oz base, in southern Israel, at the same time as six other soldiers. One of them was rescued, another was found dead, the other five are still in the hands of Hamas.
“She’s not the girl, the sister we know”
Liri Albag appears in a 3 minute and 30 second long video whose recording date cannot be verified. She asks “the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense that the team of negotiators does not return (from Qatar) without an agreement”, explained the young girl’s parents. “The video released today has torn our hearts,” the family said in a statement, reports The Times of Israel. “She’s not the daughter, the sister we know. […] She’s not doing well. His difficult mental state is evident,” the statement added.
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“We saw our heroic Liri survive and beg for her life. She is only a few dozen kilometers from us and it has been 456 days since we were able to bring her home,” the family added. The Families Forum, the main association of hostages’ relatives, said in a statement after the video was broadcast that this sign of life was “hard and undeniable proof of the urgency of bringing the hostages home.”
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Resumption of negotiations
Israel confirmed on Saturday the resumption of indirect negotiations with Hamas in Doha for the release of the hostages. Since the start of the war, only one one-week truce has been observed, in November 2023, during which 105 hostages were released, as well as 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. During the October 7 attack, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 people on the Israeli side, the majority of them civilians according to a count based on official figures, 251 people were kidnapped. A total of 96 hostages remain in Gaza, 34 of whom were declared dead by the army.
