By AFP
Protesters stand with portraits of Israeli hostages Rom Braslavski, Romi Gonen and others during a demonstration by the families of the hostages taken captive in the Gaza Strip by Palestinian militants during the October 7, 2023 attacks. Photo: AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP
The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad has published a video of an Israeli-German hostage who was abducted and taken to Gaza in October 2023 during the attack that sparked the war in the territory.
In the six-minute video, the man, Rom Braslavski, speaking in Hebrew, is seen watching recent news footage of the hunger crisis in Gaza. He identifies himself and pleads with the Israeli government to secure his release.
AFP was not immediately able to confirm the authenticity of the video nor the date it was filmed, but an organisation representing hostages' families identified the man as Braslavski, 21, a German-Israeli dual national.
Islamic Jihad, which said last week it had lost contact with the hostage, repeated that claim in commentary at the beginning of the latest video, suggesting the images were filmed more than a week ago.
A previous video of Braslavski was released on April 16.
Originally from Jerusalem, Braslavski was a security agent at the Nova music festival, one of the sites attacked in October 2023 by Hamas and other Palestinian fighters, including members of Islamic Jihad.
The footage, distributed by a movement considered a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union, shows the young man watching an Arabic-language television channel broadcasting a report on hunger in Gaza.
"They managed to break Rom. Even the strongest person has a breaking point," his family said in a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
"Rom is an example of all the hostages. They must all be brought home now."
Before his abduction, Braslavski rescued several festival-goers, according to witnesses who managed to escape.
Of the 251 people taken from Israel that day, 49 are still held in Gaza, 27 of whom are dead, according to the Israeli army.
Israel has been fighting Hamas in Gaza since the kidnappings, but a truce from January 19 to March 17 allowed the return of 33 hostages to Israel, eight of them dead, in exchange for the release of approximately 1,800 Palestinians from Israeli jails.
Others were released under a previous truce in 2023.
- AFP
