JERUSALEM — Four female soldiers are set to be released by Hamas on Saturday as part of the ceasefire and hostage release deal it struck with Israel, the militant group said.
Karina Ariev, Danielle Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag will be transferred 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 are 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 provide further details.
Israel has not confirmed the names of those set to be released, but if successful, it 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 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 Emily Damari, a dual British citizen. 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 Oct. 7, 2023, when the Hamas carried out a terrorist attack on Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage. Israel then launched 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 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.
A fifth female soldier taken hostage, Agam Berger, 20, will remain in Gaza.
Relatives hug Israeli hostage Doron Steinbracher in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv last Sunday.
Several of their colleagues were killed 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’ terrorist attack, Karina Ariev, 20, had warned her family of impending war, her sister Sasha Ariev, told the Christian Broadcasting Company, days after her sister was taken.
“They knew something, the girls who were the eyes of the country,” Sasha Ariev said, adding that her sister called her on the morning of the Hamas attack. Sasha Ariev 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 Gilboa, said in August on the Meaningful People podcast.
Orly Gilboa said she heard from Daniella Gilboa 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 the mother said she was unable to identify her daughter in any footage and she feared the worst. The following day, Daniella Gilboa’s younger sister Noam Gilboa identified her in videos that were widely circulated, recognizing her from her ponytail and pajamas.
According to Shira Albag, her daughter Liri Albag, 19, enjoyed traveling and taking photographs. Speaking at a public event last autumn, Shira Albag 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, she wrote a public letter to her that was published by the 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 gray 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 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 Levy’s mother, Ayelet 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, Raf Sanchez from Tel Aviv, and Astha Rajvanshi from London.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
