Shira, mother of Gaza hostage Liri Elbag, said on Wednesday that the family received a sign of life from her daughter and that she and other female IDF soldiers were being held by Hamas in tunnels.
"They are surviving," she told Ynet in an interview. "They've been in the tunnels for over seven months. We saw a clip of Shiri being told to stand up, sit down, she does what she was told. The clip is from the early days after the abduction. We know the girls were later separated," she said.
"They are alive," Shira Elbag said on Tuesday. "We had a sign of life a month and a half ago. We know they were surviving and being held in the tunnels for the past seven months.
Elbag said in an interview with Ynet that the families of the female IDF soldiers who were abducted from their base at Nahal Oz during the Hamas massacre were shown a video clip filmed by the terrorists in the days after the abduction. They presented photos taken from the clip on Tuesday, in a press conference calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "urgently secure the girls' release."
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Shira, mother of hostage Liri Elbag during a press conference calling on the prime minister to make a deal to free her daughter
(Photo: Hostages and Missing Families Forum )
Netanyahu is scheduled to travel to the U.S. next week to meet with President Joe Biden and address a joint session of Congress. He must first agree to a deal and bring the hostages home, they said.
In the press conference, Ayelet Levi, whose daughter Naama was not seen in the video because she was abducted and then held separately, said the prime minister offered to have her join him in D.C. but she refused. "First make a deal," she said.
Elbag said other families were also invited to join Netanyahu on his trip but all refused for various reasons.
In the interview, Elbag said the clip was presented to the families separately, each shown the section with their daughter. "Liri was ordered to state her name and where she was from. She was instructed to stand up, lie down and show a thumbs up and she did what she was told," Elbag said.
She said the girls were later separated but that the families know that they were surviving in the tunnels.