Liri Albag, 19, is one of about 100 hostages believed to remain held in the enclave nearly 15 months after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
Hamas’s military wing released a video on Saturday of Liri Albag, one of some 250 people taken hostage by the group in its attack on Israel, as Israeli and Hamas officials held further rounds of indirect cease-fire talks via mediators in Qatar.
Roughly 100 hostages are still being held in Gaza nearly 15 months since the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, prompted Israel’s war in Gaza. Talks to free them have sputtered since a weeklong truce in November 2023 that allowed for the release of 105 Israeli and foreign captives.
Ms. Albag, 19, served in a unit of lookouts charged with monitoring possible threats along the border with Gaza. During the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, Palestinian fighters overran the military base where she served, killing more than 60 soldiers and abducting Ms. Albag and six other female soldiers.
The video released on Saturday was edited and featured Ms. Albag speaking for about three and a half minutes. Ms. Albag said she had been held for over 450 days, but that could not be definitively confirmed.
In a statement, Ms. Albag’s family said that “her severe psychological distress is evident” in the video, and the footage had “torn our hearts to pieces.” They asked leaders to “make decisions as if your own children were there.”
“She is just dozens of kilometers away from us, yet for 456 days we have been unable to bring her home,” the family said.