October 7 · Personal story
Liri Albag
Abducted
October 7, 2023
Abduction location
Nahal Oz military base
Current outcome
Released alive · January 25, 2025
Released during the second exchange under the ceasefire arrangement after 477 days in captivity; reunited with family.
01
Before October 7
Albag had just completed lookout training when she first arrived at the Nahal Oz base on October 5, 2023. She said she wanted the assignment and felt highly motivated. She had only joined an experienced lookout’s shift; she had not yet completed a full shift of her own and said no emergency drill had prepared her for what followed. In her first interview after returning, she remembered the base’s ordinary social life: tea with fellow lookout Shachaf Nisani and a party the soldiers called “the last disco.” The details she chose to recall were small and specific: new colleagues, a first posting, and a weekend that still felt like the start of service.
02
October 7
At about 6:29 a.m., Albag first thought the older soldiers were knocking to wake the new arrivals. Then the alarms and rockets became clear, and she and the others ran to a shelter. She recalled 31 soldiers inside, messages reporting infiltrators, and Captain Eden Nimri taking charge while armed soldiers held positions. They went quiet when gunfire approached. Albag sent her parents a brief message at 7:44 saying she had been shot at and was all right, according to her father’s account in the interview. Armed attackers entered; Albag said she feared the captives would be killed. She and the surviving soldiers were taken from the shelter and transported into Gaza. IDF later identified Albag and Karina Ariev among the Nahal Oz soldiers abducted that day.
03
Captivity
Albag described being moved repeatedly between apartments and tunnels, with little control over basic routines and long stretches of uncertainty. She spoke of restricted food and water, poor hygiene, fear at night, and captors crossing boundaries. She said she wrote a letter in Arabic to object to how a guard treated her and request a transfer; she was moved to a tunnel two days later. Across the months, she shared captivity with other hostages, including Aviva and Keith Siegel and, later, Amit Soussana and children. Albag described mutual support as central: she tried to protect people around her and found strength in their care. Music, a notebook, and a prayer book helped structure days. She marked dates and ordinary needs in a handwritten table and made a Passover reading from prayers in the book. Her account emphasizes the effort to preserve daily habits and connection under coercion.
04
Return
On January 25, 2025, Albag was released in the second exchange under the ceasefire arrangement. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs named Albag among the four female soldiers released after 477 days and reported their reunions with family. Albag later described the moment of return as a dividing line: she sometimes called herself newly born on the day she came home. In her first interview she spoke beside her parents, still trying to understand that she was home. The reunion did not erase what had happened; she said sleep remained difficult and that memories of captivity followed her into ordinary rooms and nights.
05
Life since return
After five months of recovery, Albag decided to return to military service, according to a July 2025 profile by Israel’s Ministry of Education. In May 2026, Srugim reported that she announced her departure from the IDF in a personal post and shared photographs from her service.