BEIRUT // Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate has offered to release three Lebanese soldiers in exchange for an ex-wife of ISIL’s leader and four other female prisoners.

Al Nusra Front, which along with ISIL has held 25 Lebanese soldiers and policemen hostage for almost a year, issued the offer in a statement aired on Lebanon’s MTV television on Saturday night.

“If five of our sisters leave prison ... we will hand over three soldiers in exchange,” said Abu Malek Al Shami, Al Nusra’s “emir” in the Syrian region of Qalamoun bordering Lebanon.

Among the five hostages he named was Saja Al Dulaimi, who was arrested in Lebanon in December and is a former wife of ISIL leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, as well as a wife of an Al Nusra leader.

Al Dulaimi’s background is complicated as she reportedly belongs to a tribe that straddles Syria and Iraq and she was said to have been closer to Al Nusra than her ex-husband’s rival militants at the time of her arrest.

Al Shami’s face was not shown in the interview, which MTV conducted as part of an arranged visit by family members to loved ones held by Al Nusra in what it called “a cave in the Qalamoun mountains”.

The channel showed footage of the three-hour reunion between parents, spouses and even children of the hostages, many of them unable to hold back their tears.

The hostages, all with long beards, appeared in healthy condition inside a tent.

Sixteen of the 25 Lebanese soldiers and policemen who were taken hostage near the border with Syria in August 2014 are in the hands of Al Nusra.

The rest are held by Al Baghdadi’s ISIL group.

Since their capture, Al Nusra and ISIL have repeatedly made demands for the soldiers’ release, seeking the release of prisoners or the withdrawal of Hizbollah from the Syrian conflict.

The Shiite militia, which is backed by Iran, is fighting alongside forces loyal to President Bashar Al Assad in the civil war that has claimed more than 230,000 lives since it erupted in 2011.

* Agence France-Presse