Hamas on Monday released a video of a 19-year-old Israeli soldier who was captured in the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel that included clips of her speaking early in the conflict and then images of her lifeless body. Hamas said she had been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza on Thursday.
The Israeli military released a statement appearing to confirm the authenticity of the video, which it condemned as “psychological terrorism.”
The soldier, Noa Marciano, served in an intelligence unit and was stationed at a lookout post on Kibbutz Nahal Oz when Hamas attacked.
“Our hearts are with the Marciano family,” Israeli military officials said in a statement, noting that a military representative had visited the family and informed them of the video’s release. Military officials pledged to support the Marcianos and other hostages’ families, promising that they are “using all means, both intelligence and operational, to bring the hostages home.”
The video shows Ms. Marciano speaking into a camera and providing identifying information about herself and her family. She says that she is being held in Gaza and has been there for about four days with other hostages, and she pleads with the Israeli military to stop targeting the area, saying the explosions are close by, continual and could harm the hostages. The video ends with still images of Ms. Marciano’s lifeless body splayed on a bloodied white sheet. It was impossible to independently conclude how Ms. Marciano died.
In the weeks since the war began, a handful of images and videos of hostages have emerged. Last week, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another extremist group in Gaza, released videos of two hostages — Hanna Katzir, 77, and Yagil Yaakov, 13 — asking Israeli officials to stop bombing Gaza. The Times has not verified the videos.
Hostages often appear in such videos under duress and their statements are likely to have been coerced. Israeli officials have called such videos a form of “psychological warfare” aimed at influencing an Israeli public still reeling from the brutal Hamas-led attacks last month.
On Monday, a video purporting to be of an Israeli-Russian academic, Elizabeth Tsurkov, who was kidnapped in Iraq in March, was published by Iraqi television and on social media. In the video — which The Times has not verified — she speaks in Hebrew, urging the families of the Oct. 7 hostages to do all they can to stop the war in Gaza. It would be, if verified, the first image of Ms. Tsurkov since her capture.
