Hamas armed wing releases video of Gaza hostage
Protesters hold placards and wave flags during a demonstration calling for the release of hostages held captive in Gaza by Hamas since the Oct 7 attacks, outside the Defence Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv on Jan 4, 2025 amid the ongoing war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (Photo: AFP/JACK GUEZ)
JERUSALEM: The armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, released a video on Saturday (Jan 4) of an Israeli hostage held in Gaza since its October 2023 attack.
In the undated, three-and-a-half-minute video recording that AFP has not been able to verify, 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 the publication of the video.
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.
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.
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 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.
