JERUSALEM — Four female soldiers are set to be released by Hamas on Saturday as part of the the ceasefire and hostage release deal it struck with Israel, the militant group said.
Karina Ariev, Danielle Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag will transfered into Israeli custody, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for Hamas’ military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said in a Telegram post.
All four hostages alive, Basem Naim, a senior Hamas official, told NBC News in a separate statement.
He added that 200 prisoners would be released, including 120 sentenced to life and 80 who had been handed long sentences. He did not any further provide details on the prisoners set to be freed.
If successful, the releases will be the second such exchange as part of a complex ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, which came into effect last Sunday and signaled a pause in 15 months of bitter fighting and Israeli aerial bombardment in Gaza.
As part of the truce, which saw the first people released on both sides last Sunday, Hamas will release one civilian hostage for every 30 Palestinians held in Israeli custody and one female Israeli soldier for 50 detainees heading the other way.
In a sign of the fluidity and fragility of the negotiations, Hamas said on Monday that it would next release hostages held in Gaza on Saturday, after one of its officials had initially suggested they would be released a day later than expected.
The release last Sunday of the first three Israeli hostages and 90 Palestinian prisoners, all women and children, faced a last-minute delay, with the Israeli government saying they had not been provided with the names of the hostages due to be released.
The first three Israeli hostages released were Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher, and dual British citizen, Emily Damari. Hamas has said it plans to release 33 hostages over six weeks while Israeli forces will gradually withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
Fighting in Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023, when the Hamas carried out a terror attack on Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage. That saw Israel launch an air and land assault on Gaza, killing more than 47,000 people, most of them civilians, according to health officials in the enclave.
The four hostages Hamas set for release on Saturday were taken captive while they were serving as surveillance soldiers stationed at the Nahal Oz military base on the border with Gaza. There, they were tasked with observing suspicious military movement in the enclave.
A fifth female soldier taken hostage, Agam Berger, 20, will remain in Gaza.
Several of their colleagues were killed on Oct. 7 2023, but video footage of the surviving women taken during their capture has been widely circulated on social and broadcast media.
For three months prior to Hamas’s terror attack, Karina Ariev, 20, had warned her family of impending war, he sister Sasha, told the Christian Broadcasting Company, days after her sister was taken.
“They knew something, the girls who were the eyes of the country,” Sasha said, adding that her sister called her on the morning of the Hamas attack. Sasha said her sibling told her that she could hear shooting and screaming in the background and received a message from her sister telling her “the terrorists are here.”
Footage circulated on the day Ariev was kidnapped showed her in a Jeep, her face bloodied and her hands tied together. In January last year, Hamas released a video showing that she was still alive.
Daniella Gilboa, now 20, had told her commanders in the lead-up to Oct. 7 that she had seen people she suspected to be Hamas militants appearing to prepare for an attack, her mother Orly said in August on the Meaningful People podcast.
Orly said she heard from Daniella on the morning of the attack but did not understand that the explosions her daughter described were inside her base. She only fully appreciated the danger her daughter was in after she received a message reading “pray for me.”
During the first night after she was taken, when Orly said she was unable to identify Daniella in any footage and she feared the worst. The following day Daniella’s younger sister Noam identified her in videos that were widely circulated, recognizing her from her ponytail and pajamas.
According to her mother, Shira, Liri Albag, 19, enjoyed traveling and taking photographs. Speaking at a public event last autumn, Shira told the audience that “we are all living in the shadow of the kidnapping.”
On Feb. 4, the day of her daughter’s 19th birthday, Shira wrote a public letter to Liri on her that was published by Israeli news site Ynet.
“There’s no music in the house because you’re the one who sings … There’s no noise of cooking in the middle of the night… I miss you so much that my heart aches,” she wrote.
Naama Levy, 20, is one of the more recognizable of the five women because she was so clearly caught on video in Gaza on the morning of Oct. 7.
In footage shared with NBC News, she can be seen barefoot, wearing grey sweatpants and a black T-shirt, with her hands tied behind her back and blood on her ankles. A man wearing a flak jacket and carrying a gun can be seen pulling her by her light brown hair and pushing her into a car. There is blood on one of her arms.
A second video circulated by Levy’s family showed the moment of her capture, with men tying her hands behind her back. With a bloodied face, Levy can be heard saying to them in Hebrew that she has friends in Palestine.
Naama’s mother Levy Shacher said her daughter had been involved in a youth program aimed at fostering peace and had volunteered at a nursery school for refugee children before the attack.
“She believed in the goodness in people, and so do I,” she said.
Tovah Lazaroff reported from Jerusalem and Raf Sanchez from Tel Aviv. Astha Rajvanshi reported from London.
