Latest news with #Omri
Asharq Al-Awsat
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Hamas Releases Video Showing Israeli Hostage Marking His Birthday
Hamas's armed wing released a video showing an Israeli-Hungarian hostage walking through a tunnel in Gaza and lighting a candle to mark his birthday. In the nearly three-minute clip published by the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the hostage -- who identifies himself as Omri Miran -- addresses the camera in Hebrew. His family confirmed his identity in a statement issued through the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, while requesting that the media refrain from publishing the footage. AFP was unable to verify when the footage was recorded, but in it, Miran says he is marking his 48th birthday, which fell on April 11. He is initially shown walking through a tunnel, then seated on a mattress in a confined space, acknowledging protesters in Israel who have been demonstrating against the government and demanding the hostages' release. He states that hostages are living in constant fear of bombings and urges a deal be reached as soon as possible to secure their release, adding that he missed his wife and daughters. "On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, when we say 'never again,' an Israeli citizen cries out for help from Hamas's tunnels," his family said in a statement. "It is a moral failure for the state of Israel. Our Omri is strong and will not break, but our hearts are broken," the family added. "We will continue to fight until Omri returns to us, and especially to his two daughters who are waiting with all their hearts to hold him again." He previously appeared in an undated video released by Hamas on April 27, 2024. In that footage he urged his family to pressure the Israeli government to strike a deal with Hamas on freeing the hostages. During their attack on October 7, Hamas militants abducted 251 hostages and took them to Gaza. Of those, 58 are still being held there, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Express Tribune
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Germany, France, Britain urge Israel to end aid blockade
Israeli attacks killed at least 25 people across the besieged territory, while Germany, France and Britain urged Israel to end its blockade on aid. Israel resumed its military campaign in Gaza on March 18, ending the ceasefire that had largely paused hostilities and saw the release of 33 hostages in exchange for around 1,800 Palestinians from Israeli custody. Talks on a new ceasefire have so far failed to produce any breakthroughs, and a Hamas delegation is in Cairo for renewed negotiations with Egyptian and Qatari mediators. Hamas's armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades later Wednesday issued footage it said was of an Israeli hostage alive in a Gaza tunnel. He identified himself as 48-year-old Omri Miran. His family in a statement decried "a moral failure for the State of Israel... We will continue to fight until Omri returns to us." Israel continued to pound Gaza, with rescuers saying at least 25 people had been killed since dawn, including 11 in a strike on a school-turned-shelter. "The school was housing displaced people. The bombing sparked a massive blaze, and several charred bodies have since been recovered," civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said, describing the attack on Yaffa school in Gaza City's Al-Tuffah neighbourhood. An AFP journalist reported seeing several bodies in white shrouds at Al-Shifa hospital's morgue, where women wept over the body of a child. "We want nothing more than for the war to end, so we can live like people in the rest of the world," said Khan Yunis resident Walid al-Najjar. "We are a people who are poor, devastated -- our lives are lost." Germany, France, and Britain on Wednesday called on Israel to stop blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza, warning of "an acute risk of starvation, epidemic disease and death". "We urge Israel to immediately restart a rapid and unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza in order to meet the needs of all civilians," their foreign ministers said in a joint statement.
CNA
23-04-2025
- Politics
- CNA
Hamas releases video showing Israeli hostage marking his birthday
"On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, when we say 'never again,' an Israeli citizen cries out for help from Hamas's tunnels," his family said in a statement. "It is a moral failure for the state of Israel. Our Omri is strong and will not break, but our hearts are broken," the family added. "We will continue to fight until Omri returns to us, and especially to his two daughters who are waiting with all their hearts to hold him again." During the Oct 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants on Israel, Miran was seized from his home in kibbutz Nahal Oz in front of his wife Lichay Miran-Lavi and their two small daughters. He previously appeared in an undated video released by Hamas on Apr 27, 2024.
New Straits Times
23-04-2025
- Politics
- New Straits Times
Hamas releases video showing Israeli hostage marking his 48th birthday
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Hamas's armed wing released a video Wednesday showing an Israeli-Hungarian hostage walking through a tunnel in Gaza and lighting a candle to mark his birthday. In the nearly three-minute clip published by the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the hostage – who identifies himself as Omri Miran – addresses the camera in Hebrew. His family confirmed his identity in a statement issued through the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, while requesting that the media refrain from publishing the footage. AFP was unable to verify when the footage was recorded, but in it, Miran says he is marking his 48th birthday, which fell on April 11. He is initially shown walking through a tunnel, then seated on a mattress in a confined space, acknowledging protesters in Israel who have been demonstrating against the government and demanding the hostages' release. He states that hostages are living in constant fear of bombings and urges a deal be reached as soon as possible to secure their release, adding that he missed his wife and daughters. "On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, when we say 'never again,' an Israeli citizen cries out for help from Hamas's tunnels," his family said in a statement. "It is a moral failure for the state of Israel. Our Omri is strong and will not break, but our hearts are broken," the family added. "We will continue to fight until Omri returns to us, and especially to his two daughters who are waiting with all their hearts to hold him again." During the Oct 7, 2023 attack by Hamas fighters on Israel, Miran was seized from his home in kibbutz Nahal Oz in front of his wife Lichay Miran-Lavi and their two small daughters. He previously appeared in an undated video released by Hamas on April 27, 2024. In that footage he urged his family to pressure the Israeli government to strike a deal with Hamas on freeing the hostages. After seeing that video of a bearded Miran, apparently unable to shave, his father Dani Miran told AFP he was letting his own beard grow in solidarity.
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
As an Israeli hostage turns 48, his wife waits for blue ticks on her messages
When Omri Miran finally opens his WhatsApp account, he's going to receive a torrent of messages. Photos of his daughters. Late night musings from his wife, Lishay, as she lies in bed. Snapshots from an Israeli family life that's gone on for 18 painful months without him. Lishay started sending the messages three weeks after Hamas gunmen violently snatched Omri from their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, on 7 October 2023. She calls the chat Notes to Omri. She's lost count of the number of messages she's sent. "My love, there are so many people you'll need to meet when you come back," she wrote at the end of October 2023. "Amazing people who are helping me. Strangers who have become as close as can be." Three-and-a-half months later, she posted a message from the couple's eldest daughter. "Roni just said goodnight to you at the window like every night. She says you don't hear her and she doesn't see you… You're really missing from her life and it's getting harder for her to deal with your absence." Friday was Omri's birthday. His second in captivity. As he turns 48, somewhere in the tunnels of Gaza, Lishay will be writing again, with tales of two daughters who were still babies when he last saw them. Released hostages say Omri was seen alive last July. Lishay's belief in her husband's survival seems unshakeable, but this is the toughest time of the year. Not just Omri's birthday, but also the eve of Pesach (Passover), when Jews celebrate the Biblical story of Exodus, in which Moses led their ancestors out of slavery in Egypt. "You know, Pesach is the holiday of freedom," Lishay says when we meet in a park near Tel Aviv's Hostages Square. "I don't feel free. I don't think anyone in Israel can feel free." In the square itself, Omri's birthday was marked on Friday. The posters calling for his release once listed the hostage's age as 46. Then 47. Danny, Omri's father, crossed out both, and wrote 48. Nearby, preparations were well under way for a symbolic Passover Seder, or ritual feast. A long table was being set, with places for each of the remaining 59 hostages still in Gaza (of whom 24 are believed to be alive). The square is full of symbols: a mock-up of a Gaza tunnel, tents to represent the Nova music festival where hundreds were killed. Along with a merchandise stall to support the families and a "virtual reality hostage experience", it's all part of a collective effort to keep the plight of the missing in the public eye and maintain political pressure on the Israeli government. Lishay and her daughters have yet to return to the house where family life was blown apart in a few traumatic hours, 18 months ago. But Lishay says she goes back to Nahal Oz from time to time to commune with her husband. The kibbutz is just 700m from the border with Gaza. It's as close as she can get to Omri. "I can feel him over there," she says. "I can speak with him." After a ceasefire came into effect in mid-January, the border was quiet. Lishay allowed herself to hope, even though she knew Omri's age meant that he would not be among the first to be freed. But the ceasefire ended after just two months. Now the border area - which Israelis call "the Gaza pocket" - echoes once more to the sounds of war, reigniting the deepest fears of all hostage families. "I was terrified," she says of her most recent trip. Lishay is careful not to condemn her government, as some hostage families have. But she says that when she realised the war had resumed, she was "really angry". When Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Hungary's Viktor Orban last week, he posted that the two men had discussed "the Hungarian hostage", a reference to Omri's dual Israel-Hungarian citizenship. For Lishay, it stung. "I was really, really hard to see this," she says. "Omri has a name. He's not just a hostage." In a Passover message delivered on Friday, Netanyahu once again promised the families that hostages would return and Israel's enemies would be defeated. Recent days have seen talk of another ceasefire deal, but it doesn't feel imminent. "The last time that it happened," Lishay says, referring to the first ceasefire deal in November 2023, "we waited more than a year for another agreement. So now we are going to wait one year more? They can't survive over there." For now, it seems her WhatsApp messages to Omri are destined to remain unopened. But that doesn't stop her looking for the grey ticks to turn blue. "I know someday it'll happen."
