A video (archive) and photos (archive) of the hostages emerged on local Facebook news and community pages.
To source originals, we searched on Facebook using Arabic terms such as:
This returned the earliest known version of the video, which was posted by Najeeb Abu Fakher.
Fakher is an anti-Assad opposition figure from Sweida, who is based in Turkey. He said in the caption that the video was sent via WhatsApp from a committee negotiating with IS for the captives’ release.
IS used the first video of the hostages to start negotiations and sent it directly to a family member, according to activists who shared the video.
One of the women to speak was identified as Suad Adeeb Abu Ammar. She speaks in a local accent and appeals for help from the Syrian government.
“We are with the Islamic State,” she says in the video. “We ask [Syrian President] Bashar Assad and Kinana Huwija to follow the Islamic State demand to release their prisoners and stop the military operation on Yarmouk Basin in order to set us free. If you don’t answer these demands, they are going to kill us. I am Suad Adeeb Abu Ammar, July 28, 2018.”
The reference to Kinana Huwija here relates to a TV presenter who works for Syrian State television (see an archived broadcast here). Huwija was reported by activists (report archived here) to have been involved in negotiating with IS fighters in Yarmouk Camp, Damascus. (See report here.)
The location of the first video was not verified, due to the limited nature of the footage. The video shows a woman speaking in a dark space with rough walls, apparently a cave. In the background, a light, possibly daylight, can be seen. A review of reporting on the area indicates that Sweida province is famous for caves. (See these reports from 2009 and 2010, archived here and here.)
Local media in Sweida published a list of 30 names (archived here) of the hostages, saying they were kidnapped from the village of al-Shobki during the Sweida attacks. The name Suad Adeeb Abu Ammar was on that list.
Photos posted by other media activists show the same woman standing in front of an IS flag.
Suad Adeeb Abu Ammar, in the video, gives the date as July 28. The first photo showing her was shared on July 27. The kidnappings were reported on July 25. The exact date of recording was not independently confirmed.