Family of American orphan, 3, taken by Hamas hopes she is home by her 4th birthday

The family of a 3-year-old American orphan who is expected to be among the 50 hostages released by Hamas after reaching a deal with Israel said they are hoping to see her safely home by her fourth birthday on Friday.

Abigail Mor Idan, 3, was snatched by the terrorist group after fleeing her south Israel home where her father Roy Edan, 43, a photojournalist, and mother, Smadar Edan, were murdered on Oct. 7.

“The one thing that we all hold on to is that hope now that Abigail comes home, she comes home by Friday,” the toddler’s aunt Liz Hirsh Naftali told CNN Tuesday night. 

“Friday is her 4th birthday. We need to see Abigail come out and then we will be able to believe it.”

Naftali, who lives in Los Angeles, added that she and her family watched the news all day on Tuesday amid the hostage negotiations “and we are still at this place where we haven’t seen, we don’t know any details about any of the hostages.

“And so I hope that starting tomorrow, we will start to learn more about the hostages, and we will start to see children, women be the first group that is released.”

The toddler was reportedly in her father’s arms when he and her mother were shot and killed by Hamas.

She crawled out “from under her father’s body… full of his blood” and fled to a neighbor’s home, where she was later kidnapped by Hamas, Hirsh Naftali told NBC News last week.

Her siblings, ages 6 and 10, who witnessed their parents’ murder, escaped unharmed by hiding in a closet for 14 hours, she said.

“For our family, we have spent the last seven weeks … worrying, wondering, praying, hoping,” Abigail’s aunt told CNN Tuesday.

She said she hopes the young girl is “with the mother that was taking care of her at the time with her own three kids.”

“And I hope that Abigail is being taken care of and left [alone], and that the deal will follow through and these hostages will be back home with their families in the next couple of days.”

Abigail is among the three American hostages who are expected to be released under the deal brokered on Tuesday, along with two women.

“Today’s deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released,” President Biden said in a statement.

A senior administration official also told CNN, “We are determined to get everybody home,” noting, “The way the deal is structured, it very much incentivizes the release of everybody.”

Under the terms of the deal, Hamas agreed to release 50 women and children in exchange for a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and Israel’s release of an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners, all of whom are also women and children.

Egypt’s state-run Qahera TV channel said the truce would take place at 10 a.m. local time Thursday.

The temporary cease-fire would be most beneficial to Gaza, where Israel’s relentless airstrikes have reportedly killed more than 11,000 people and made it difficult to get aid in the territory where many Palestinians have no access to clean food and water or electricity and medicine.

If Hamas agrees to release more of the 240 Israeli hostages then the cease-fire could be extended longer, the senior official told CNN.