Jerusalem According to the militant organization, Hamas will release four female soldiers on Saturday as part of the ceasefire and hostage-release agreement it reached with Israel.
In return for Palestinian captives, Karina Ariev, Danielle Gilboa, Naama Levy, and Liri Albag will be moved into Israeli custody, according to a Telegram message by Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for Hamas’ armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades.
Senior Hamas leader Basem Naim informed NBC News in a separate statement that all four hostages were still alive.
He went on to say that 200 inmates, 120 of whom had received life sentences and 80 of whom had received lengthy sentences, would be released. He didn’t go into further detail about the inmates who would be released.
The releases, if successful, will be the second of their kind as part of a complicated ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas that went into effect last Sunday and marked the end of 15 months of intense fighting and Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
Hamas will release one civilian hostage for every 30 Palestinians detained by Israel and one female Israeli soldier for every 50 captives traveling in the opposite direction as part of the truce, which saw the first individuals released on both sides last Sunday.
After one of its officials first indicated that the captives would be freed a day later than anticipated, Hamas said on Monday that it would next release them on Saturday, demonstrating the fluidity and fragility of the discussions.
The Israeli authorities said they had not been given the identities of the hostages who were scheduled to be released, causing a last-minute delay in the release of the first three Israeli hostages and 90 Palestinian detainees, all of whom were women and children, last Sunday.
Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher, and Emily Damari, a dual British citizen, were the first three Israeli captives to be freed. As Israeli soldiers progressively leave the Gaza Strip, Hamas has stated that it intends to free 33 hostages over a six-week period.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a terror strike on Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage. This marked the start of the fighting in Gaza. According to health officials in the enclave, Israel killed around 47,000 individuals during its air and land attack on Gaza, the majority of whom were civilians.
Hamas plans to free the four prisoners on Saturday. The detainees were captured while working as surveillance soldiers at the Nahal Oz military installation on the Gaza border. They had to keep an eye out for any suspicious military activity within the enclave.
Agam Berger, a 20-year-old female soldier who was the fifth to be taken captive, will stay in Gaza.
On October 7, 2023, a number of their coworkers were killed, but video footage of the women who survived their captivity has gone viral on social media and in the media.
Days after her sister was abducted, Sasha told the Christian Broadcasting Company that her 20-year-old sister Karina Ariev had warned her family about the impending war for three months before Hamas’ terror attack.
According to Sasha, who added that her sister had called her the morning of the Hamas attack, “they knew something, the girls who were the eyes of the country.” Sasha claimed that her sister informed her that the terrorists were present and that she could hear gunfire and screams in the distance.
On the day of her kidnapping, footage surfaced of Ariev in a Jeep with her hands bound together and her face covered with blood. She was still alive, according to a video published by Hamas in January of last year.
According to her mother Orly’s statement on the Meaningful People podcast in August, Daniella Gilboa, now 20, told her superiors that she had witnessed individuals she believed to be Hamas militants seeming to get ready for an attack in the days leading up to October 7.
Orly claimed to have heard from Daniella the morning of the assault, but she was unaware that her base was the site of the explosions her daughter had described. It wasn’t until she got a message saying, “Pray for me,” that she realized how dangerous her daughter was.
Orly claimed that she couldn’t recognize Daniella in any of the footage and that she feared the worst on the first night after she was taken. On the next day, Daniella’s younger sister Noam recognized her from her pajamas and hair in videos that went viral.
Liri Albag, 19, loved to travel and take pictures, according to her mother, Shira. We are all living under the shadow of the kidnapping, Shira said to the crowd during a public event last fall.
Shira wrote a public letter to Liri about her daughter on February 4, the day of her 19th birthday, and the Israeli news outlet Ynet published it.
Since you are the one who sings, there is no music in the house. There isn’t any cooking noise in the middle of the night. “My heart hurts because I miss you so much,” she wrote.
One of the five women, Naama Levy, 20, is more well-known due to the fact that she was captured on camera in Gaza early on October 7.
She is shown in the video, which was sent to NBC News, barefoot, in a black T-shirt and grey sweatpants, with blood on her ankles and her hands bound behind her back. She is seen being pulled by her light brown hair and pushed into a car by a man with a gun and a flak jacket. One of her arms is covered in blood.
In a second video that Levy’s family shared, guys were seen tying her hands behind her back when she was captured. Levy is heard telling them in Hebrew that she has friends in Palestine, her face bloodied.
Before the incident, Naama volunteered at a nursery school for refugee children and participated in a youth program that promotes peace, according to her mother Levy Shacher.
She replied that she and I both thought that people were good.
Raf Sanchez reported from Tel Aviv, and Tovah Lazaroff from Jerusalem. From London, Astha Rajvanshi reported.