Who are the four Israeli hostages freed from Gaza?
The Israeli military said its troops rescued on Saturday four Israeli hostages alive from Gaza. They had been held there since Hamas Palestinian militants captured them on October 7 during their attack on the Supernova music festival in southern Israel, the army said.
Here are short profiles of the captives identified by the army as Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv:
- Noa Argamani, 26 -
Noa Argamani became one of the faces of the hostages in the immediate aftermath of October 7 after a video emerged of her being taken away from the festival by Hamas fighters on the back of a motorbike.
"Don't kill me!" she screamed.
The video showed her boyfriend, Avinatan Or, an engineer, being led away separately.
A student at Ben-Gurion University in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, Argamani "loves life", a group of her friends said on social media.
Her Chinese-Israeli mother has brain cancer and in a public video spoke of her despair at the possibility she may not see her daughter before she dies.
- Almog Meir Jan, 22 -
Almog Meir Jan, a resident of Or Yehuda in the Tel Aviv area, left a voice message just before 8:00 am on October 7, on the cellphone of his mother Orit Meir.
"Mum, rockets are (falling) everywhere. I don't know what is going on," he said. "Mum, I love you."
Orit Meir told reporters in Athens in November that her life had become "a nightmare."
The last glimpse she had of her son was a Hamas video released shortly after the attack.
"He was lying on the ground," she said. "He was terrified, terrified."
- Andrey Kozlov, 27 -
Russian-Israeli Andrey Kozlov was a security guard at the music festival. During the attack he was in touch with his father and friends, saying he had nowhere to hide.
His family was informed three weeks later that he had been taken hostage.
Born in Saint Petersburg, he had recently arrived in Israel and was living in Rishon Lezion, south of Tel Aviv.
- Shlomi Ziv, 41 -
Shlomi Ziv was part of the security team at the Supernova music festival, according to Israeli media.
One of his two sisters spoke to him at 7:30 am on the day of the attack. He told her there had been shooting and rocket fire and there was a bottleneck of cars trying to leave the site.
His last conversation took place within the hour. Out of breath and running, he told his other sister he would call back.
Ziv lived with his wife in the town of Elkosh near the Lebanese border. He worked as a wholesale distributor but had recently studied to become an interior designer.
burs-it/jsa
