JERUSALEM (AFP) : The Israeli army on Tuesday confirmed the death of Noa Marciano, a woman soldier held captive in Gaza by Palestinian militant group Hamas.
A statement from the army called Marciano “a fallen IDF soldier abducted by a terror organization,” a day after the army confirmed her identity following the release by Hamas of a video showing the young woman in captivity.
On Monday, Hamas’s military wing issued a video of Marciano identifying herself and calling on Israel to stop its bombing campaign, juxtaposed with a picture of her apparently dead.
Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, said Marciano was killed in an Israeli strike. The Israeli army did not say how she was killed.
Marciano’s death brings the number of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza since the start of the war to 47.
Israel has been relentlessly bombarding the Gaza Strip since Hamas fighters carried out an October 7 attack on southern Israeli communities, the deadliest in the country’s history.
About 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the Hamas attacks and around 240 people taken captive, according to Israeli officials.
More than 11,200 people, most of them civilians and thousands of them children, have been killed in Gaza in retaliatory strikes by Israel, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
