The families of five female Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hamas released harrowing images of the bloodied and bruised women’s first days in the terrorists’ clutches.
The main photograph, shared by The Missing Hostages and Missing Families Forum on Tuesday, shows Liri Albag, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa, and Karina Ariev sitting on sleeping mats with a framed picture of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh positioned behind them.
Another photo portrays a fifth hostage, Naama Levy, being forced to pose for a snapshot despite suffering a black eye and swollen face.
Along with the clear injuries on Levy’s face, Gilboa sports a large bandage on the top of her head and Ariev wears a gauze wrap from her chin to her head in the group photo.
“The images reveal them bruised and wounded from the horrific [Oct. 7] abduction that the entire world witnessed,” the forum said in a statement about the new photographs.
The families of the victims told Channel 12 that the photos were recovered by the IDF and shown to them months earlier — the distraught relatives noting that the clothes they were wearing in the pictures were not their own.
The families opted to release the chilling new images now as a means to push Israeli leaders to accept a US-backed cease-fire deal with Hamas that would see the hostages freed.
“We demand that the Israeli government, and particularly its leader, look these girls in the eyes, and try to imagine what they and all the hostages have endured for 284 days, and do everything possible to bring them home,” the families said.
The five women featured in the new photographs were the same five soldiers seen in sickening Hamas bodycam footage released in May, which showed the troops covered in blood and surrounded by the bodies of their massacred comrades when the terror group took over their base in Nahal Oz.
The IDF troops were handcuffed and pressed against the wall while still in their pajamas, with one of the terrorists gloating as he announced the group’s alleged plans to sexually assault the soldiers.
The five women are among the some 120 hostages who remain in Gaza as the war approaches its tenth month.
Their families have called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet with them before his trip to the US later this month, the Times of Israel reports.
