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Hamas released a video showing a 19-year-old Israeli prisoner as indirect talks between the group and Israel on a ceasefire and hostage release resume in Qatar.
The footage shows Liri Albagh urging the Israeli government to reach a deal.
She was taken hostage along with six other female conscripts at the Nahal Oz army base on the Gaza border during a Hamas attack in October 2023. Five of them remain in captivity.
The announcement of renewed talks came as Israel stepped up attacks on Gaza, with Palestinian rescuers saying more than 30 people were killed in Saturday’s bombing.
A strike on a house in Gaza City on Saturday killed 11 people, including seven children, according to the Hamas-run Civil Defense Agency.
In the pictures, you can see how residents are searching among the rubble for survivors and the bodies of the dead wrapped in shrouds.
“We were woken up by a loud explosion. Everything was shaking,” neighbor Ahmed Musa told AFP.
“It was a home for children, women. No one was wanted or who posed a threat.”
Israel’s military said on Sunday it had struck more than 100 “terrorist targets” in the Gaza Strip in the past two days and “killed dozens of Hamas terrorists.”
Responding to the video showing their daughter, Lira Albagh’s parents said it had torn their hearts to pieces and appealed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “make decisions as if your own were there children”.
The headquarters of the Hostage and Families Forum, which represents the families of the hostages, said the signs of life from Lira were “stark and irrefutable evidence of the urgency of returning all hostages home”.
In a conversation with Lira Albag’s parents, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that his country’s delegation will remain at the negotiating table until all the hostages return home.
Israeli officials have previously characterized the publication of such videos by Hamas as psychological warfare.
A senior Palestinian official told the BBC last month that negotiations for a ceasefire and the release of the hostages were largely completedbut key issues still needed to be resolved.
On Sunday, the Israeli military said it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen, the latest in a series of similar attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi movement.
The Houthis said they fired a “hypersonic ballistic missile” toward a power plant near the Israeli city of Haifa. The group says it began striking shipping in the Red Sea and shelling Israel in response to Israeli military action in Gaza.
The current war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
Israel’s military campaign against Hamas has killed more than 45,700 people, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry.
Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday that all three public hospitals in northern Gaza had been completely destroyed and “destroyed” by the Israeli military.
The Israeli military has imposed a blockade on northern Gaza since October, with the UN saying the area is under “almost total siege” as Israeli forces severely restrict access to aid supplies to the area, where an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people remain. . .
Late last month, the Israeli military forced patients and medical staff out of the Kamal Advan Hospital in Beit Lahia, claiming the facility was a “Hamas terrorist stronghold” and the hospital director Husam Abu Safiya was arrested.
It said it facilitated the transfer of some health workers and patients to an Indonesian hospital nearby. But Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday that this hospital had also been put out of business along with the hospital in Beit Hanoun.
The head of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, again called for an end to attacks on hospitals and medical workers. “People in Gaza need access to medical care,” he said.
Israel says its forces operate in accordance with international law and do not target civilians.
On Saturday, the Biden administration said it did plans $8bn (£6.4bn) arms sale to Israel.. The weapons batch, which requires approval by US House and Senate committees, includes rockets, projectiles and other munitions.
The move comes just over two weeks before Biden leaves office and Donald Trump takes office.
Washington has consistently rejected calls to suspend military aid to Israel over the number of civilians killed in Gaza.
