One day after Israeli hostage Cpl. Noa Marciano appeared in a Hamas propaganda video, the Israel Defense Forces cleared for publication on Tuesday morning that the 19-year-old had already died in captivity.
Marciano, a resident of Modi’in in central Israel, was abducted from Kibbutz Nahal Oz, where she served as a lookout.
On Monday night, Hamas released a video of Marciano that the Israel Defense Forces described as “psychological terror.” The video claimed that Marciano was killed in an airstrike in Gaza.
“After analyzing the footage, experts suggest that her injuries do not align with those typically sustained in airstrikes,” the IDF said in a statement. “The observed wounds appear more consistent with bullet injuries, and there is also an indication that she may have suffered from injuries related to a fall from a height.”
Hamas has denied the International Red Cross any access to any of the more than 200 captives it is holding in Gaza.
Family members and supporters of the Israeli hostages kicked off a march in Tel Aviv on Tuesday to call for their release.
The demonstrators will in a few days arrive in Jerusalem, where they will hold a protest outside the Prime Minister’s Office to raise awareness regarding the captives’ plight.
Also on Tuesday, Israel cleared for publication that officials believe that one of the hostages likely gave birth in captivity.
Meanwhile, Iraqi television aired a video on Monday showing Elizabeth Tsurkov, a kidnapped Israeli-Russian academic. Tsurkov was abducted in Baghdad by Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia.
Speaking in Hebrew and appearing to read dictated lines, Tsurkov referred to the war in Gaza and Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israeli communities, saying she had worked in Syria and Iraq for Israeli and U.S. intelligence.
It wasn’t clear when the video was filmed.
A doctoral student at Princeton University researching radical Islamic groups, the 38-year-old Tsurkov apparently entered Iraq on her Russian passport.
The United States has designated Kata’ib Hezbollah (a separate and distinct organization from the Lebanese Hezbollah group) as a terrorist organization.
