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TEL AVIV: Relatives of the last Israeli hostages released from Gaza after two years in captivity said their loved ones endured harrowing conditions, with some reportedly held in cages, pits or underground tunnels.
Last week, Hamas freed all 20 surviving hostages as agreed in a US-brokered ceasefire deal with Israel.
Among them was Omri Miran.
“At the beginning, there were five hostages in a cage measuring 1.8 meters by 1.6 meters (six feet by five),” his brother Boaz Miran told Israel Hayom newspaper.
“You can’t stand up in there, you have to bend.”
Fellow hostage Guy Gilboa Dalal was 24 at the time of his abduction in the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas that triggered the war.
He was held captive by Palestinian militants together with his childhood friend Evyatar David.
In August, Hamas released a propaganda video showing David severely malnourished and visibly weakened as he was seen digging his own grave inside a tunnel.
“We have all seen the video of Evyatar David in captivity — he was nothing but skin and bones,” said Guy Gilboa Dalal’s brother Gal.
“Guy was in exactly the same condition,” he told AFP.
“Hamas starved them in order to turn them into visible examples of hunger,” he said, referring to the food scarcity that resulted from a blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip earlier this year after a previous ceasefire broke down.
UN-backed experts reported in August that part of the territory was facing famine, a claim disputed by Israel.
The hostage’s brother also described psychological abuse.
“They were told multiple lies — that the Israeli army was looking for them in order to kill them. They were shown other hostages who, they were told, had been deliberately killed by Israeli forces,” Gal Gilboa Dalal said.
“They have a very long road ahead of them, physically and mentally,” he added.
Contacted by AFP, a Hamas official speaking on condition of anonymity said the Palestinian Islamist movement and its allies “treated the detainees under their custody in accordance with the teachings of Islam, in a very ethical and humane manner.”
The official said the hostages “lived in the same conditions as their guards” and received “medical and psychological care and food according to what was available in Gaza.”
“No captive was subjected to insults or torture... unlike the treatment of Palestinian prisoners by (Israel),” the official claimed.
While none of the 20 former hostages has yet spoken publicly, their relatives have relayed details of their captivity.

- Without oxygen -

In The Times of Israel on Wednesday, Tami Braslavski said her son Rom Braslavski had been flogged and beaten between April and July “with objects I won’t even mention.”
Avinatan Or, who was held alone for two years, once attempted to escape but was caught and placed in a cage handcuffed, said his father Yaron.
“It was a wire enclosure 1.8 meters high, as long as a mattress plus a little more. You could call it a cage,” he told Israel’s public radio.
Also speaking to the national broadcaster, the father of former hostage Yosef Haim Ohana said his son “spent several days in an underground pit with six other captives, without enough room to sit or lie down and with barely enough air to survive.”
“(Their captors) put seven men in one pit,” said Avi Ohana. “They couldn’t sit, only lean against the wall while standing. There was no oxygen.”
Hamas and other Palestinian Islamist groups abducted 251 hostages from Israel on October 7, 2023 and took them to the Gaza Strip, both living and dead.
More than 200 of them were returned to Israel during two ceasefires in late 2023 and early 2025, or were rescued in Israeli army operations.
At the start of October, there were still 48 living and dead hostages in Gaza, including the remains of an Israeli soldier killed in 2014.
Under the terms of a US-brokered ceasefire that entered into force on October 10, Hamas and its allies released the 20 last living hostages.
In the days since, it has so far returned 12 bodies out of the 28 it was still holding.
Israel said it had released 1,968 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in exchange for the last living hostages, and has also handed over 150 bodies of Palestinians in return for the remains of 10 deceased Israeli hostages.
Remains of two other hostages returned were that of a Nepalese student and a Thai farmworker.
 

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency and hospitals said a series of Israeli air strikes across the territory killed at least 45 people on Sunday, updating an earlier toll of 33.
The Israeli military said it had struck dozens of Hamas targets across the Gaza Strip, as both Israel and Hamas accused each other of violating the nine-day-old ceasefire brokered by US President Donald Trump.
“At least 45 people were killed as a result of Israeli air strikes on various areas of the Gaza Strip,” Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defense agency, which operates as a rescue service under Hamas authority, told AFP.
Four hospitals in Gaza confirmed the death toll to AFP, saying they had received the dead and wounded.
Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat reported 24 dead and 73 wounded from multiple strikes in central Gaza.
Al-Aqsa Hospital said it received 12 dead from nearby bombings, while Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis reported five dead, and Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City confirmed four fatalities.
Earlier, Bassal detailed several of the strikes.
He said six people were killed when an Israeli strike targeted a “group of civilians” in Zuwaida town in central Gaza.
Six other people, including children, were killed and 13 others injured in two separate strikes near Nuseirat in central Gaza, Bassal said.
A woman and two children were killed when a drone strike hit a tent housing displaced people near Asdaa City, north of Khan Yunis.
Two people, including a journalist, were killed and several others injured in an Israeli strike in the western part of Zuwaida town in central Gaza.
In another attack, two people were killed and several injured when an Israeli strike hit a tent in the Al-Ahli Club area in Nuseirat, central Gaza, Bassal said.
Two more people were killed in an Israeli air strike in eastern Jabalia, northern Gaza Strip, he added.
One individual was killed in a strike on an apartment in a building in western Gaza City, the civil defense agency said.
The others succumbed later on Sunday to injuries received in these strikes, Bassal said.
The Israeli military told AFP it was checking reports of casualties.
Later on Sunday, the Israeli military said it has resumed enforcing the ceasefire in Gaza.