Hamas airs video of captive Gilad Shalit, hours after releasing photo
Footage shows abducted IDF soldier smiling with one of his guards during his 5 years as hostage in Gaza Strip
The Hamas terror group on Wednesday evening released a video clip featuring IDF soldier Gilad Shalit during his five years captivity in the Gaza strip.
The footage lasts no more than three seconds, and include two clips of Shalit smiling with some of the guards who watched over him during his incarceration.
The video was broadcast on Hamas’s television station.
The film was broadcast just hours after Hamas released a photo of Shalit, apparently taken from a screenshot of the video, standing next to guard Abd al-Rahman al-Mubashar, who the group says died recently in a tunnel collapse in the Gaza Strip.
On Tuesday, Hamas released the names of the five operatives who guarded IDF soldier Gilad Shalit during his five-year captivity by the Palestinian terror group in the Gaza Strip.
The five Hamas members — named as Sami al-Hamaidah, Abdallah Labad, Khaled Abu Bachrah, Mahmoud Rashid Daoud and Abd al-Rahman al-Mubashar — were involved in the abduction of Shalit and have all since been killed, according to Arabic reports.
Shalit was captured in 2006 in a cross-border attack and held hostage by the Gaza-based group until October 2011, when Israel freed 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in return for his release.
A year after Shalit was freed, the Hamas military wing released a video dramatizing and documenting his abduction and the killing of two other IDF soldiers in its June 25, 2006, terrorist raid into Israel.
The 45-minute propaganda film broadcast by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades showed the planning, preparation and kidnapping of Shalit on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border. The film concluded with previously unseen footage of Shalit handed to Egypt by Hamas strongman Ahmed Jabari.
Israeli soldiers Hanan Barak and Pavel Slutzker were both killed in the attack, which also lightly injured Shalit.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
