The family of a 3-year-old American orphan expected to be among 50 hostages released by Hamas after reaching a deal with Israel said they hope to see him safely home by his fourth birthday on Friday.
Abigail Mor Idan, 3, was taken by the terrorist group after fleeing her home in southern Israel where her father Roy Edan, 43, a photojournalist, and her mother, Smadar Edan, were killed on Oct. 7.
“The one thing we’re all holding on to is the hope now that Abigail is home, she’s home on Friday,” the child’s aunt, Liz Hirsh Naftali told CNN Tuesday night.
“Friday is his 4th birthday. We need to see Abigail come out and then we will be able to believe her.”
Naftali, who lives in Los Angeles, added that he and his family watched the news all day Tuesday amid hostage negotiations “and we’re still in this place that we’ve never seen, we don’t know any details about any hostage.
“So I hope that starting tomorrow, we will start to learn more about the hostages, and we will start to see children, women being the first group to be freed.”
Abigail Mor Idan, 3, was kidnapped by a terrorist group after fleeing her home in southern Israel where her father Roy Edan, 43, a photojournalist, and mother, Smadar Edan, were killed on Oct. 7. Courtesy of the family
The child was reportedly in his father’s arms when he and his mother were shot and killed by Hamas.
He crawled out “from under his father’s corpse… covered in his father’s blood” and fled to a neighbor’s house, where he was later kidnapped by Hamas, Hirsh Naftali told NBC News last week.
His brothers, aged 6 and 10, who witnessed their parents’ murder, escaped unharmed by hiding in a closet for 14 hours, he said.
“For our family, we’ve spent the last seven weeks … worrying, wondering, praying, hoping,” aunt Abigail told CNN Tuesday.
Israel and Hamas have negotiated a deal to release hostages held by the terrorist organization in exchange for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners.ABIR SULTAN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Abigail is among three American hostages expected to be released under a deal brokered on Tuesday. , with two women.ABIR SULTAN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
He said he hoped the young girl “was with the mother who was taking care of her at the time with her own three children.”
“And I hope Abigail is taken care of and abandoned [alone] and the agreement will go ahead and these hostages will return home with their families in the next few days.”
Abigail was among three American hostages expected to be released under a deal brokered on Tuesday, along with two women.
“Today’s agreement should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all freed,” President Biden said in a statement.
A senior administration official also told CNN, “We are determined to bring everybody home,” noting, “The way the deal is structured, it’s very incentivized to release everybody.”
A temporary ceasefire would benefit Gaza the most, where ongoing Israeli airstrikes have reportedly killed more than 11,000 people and made it difficult to get aid into the territory.IDF
Under the terms of the deal, Hamas agreed to release 50 women and children in exchange for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza and Israel’s release of an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners, all of whom are also women and children.
Egypt’s state-owned Qahera TV channel said the ceasefire would take place at 10am local time Thursday.
A temporary ceasefire would benefit Gaza the most, where ongoing Israeli airstrikes have reportedly killed more than 11,000 people and made it difficult to get aid in the territory where many Palestinians have no access to food and clean water or electricity and medicine. .
If Hamas agrees to release more than 240 Israeli hostages then the truce could be extended longer, the senior official told CNN.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
