US toddler who watched parents die among hostages released by Hamas
A four-year-old American girl who crawled out from beneath the bloodied body of her father before being kidnapped by Hamas was one of 17 hostages released by the terror group on Sunday.
Abigail Mor Idan, a dual US-Israeli citizen, spent her 51 days in captivity in Gaza after seeing both her parents murdered on Oct 7.
In a hastily-arranged press conference, US president Biden said: “She’s been through a terrible trauma.”
Abigail was one of 14 Israeli citizens, one of whom also had Russian citizenship, who were handed over on Sunday evening, the third day of fraught and emotional transfers under Israel’s four-day ceasefire deal with Hamas.
Most of those freed were from the kibbutzim of Kfar Aza and Nahal Oz.
Three Thai nationals were also released under a separate agreement. They were handed over to the Red Cross at around 5pm local time, who then delivered them to Israeli forces.
One of the elderly Israeli hostages was flown straight to hospital via helicopter due to fears for her health.
Abigail Idan
Abigail Mor Idan, 4, was reportedly in her father Roy’s arms when the 43-year-old photojournalist and her mother, Smadar Eden, were shot and killed by Hamas on Oct 7.
She was said to have crawled out “from under her father’s body” and fled to a neighbour’s home in southern Israel, where she was later kidnapped.
Her siblings, aged 6 and 10, also witnessed their parents’ murder but escaped unharmed by hiding in a closet for 14 hours, relatives said.
The orphaned toddler’s American relatives said they hoped she would be released before her fourth birthday on Friday.
“The one thing that we all hold on to is that hope now that Abigail comes home, she comes home by Friday,” her aunt, Liz Hirsh Naftali, told CNN from the Los Angeles home.
Elma Avraham
At the other end of the scale was Elma Avraham, 84. She was abducted from her home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz after being unable to close her safe room door because it was too heavy.
As the Hamas rampage unfolded, she told her son Uri Rawitz on the phone in Tel Aviv that she could hear men shouting in Arabic outside.
Rawit’s brother, who also lives in the kibbutz, was locked in his safe room and unable to help.
He was rescued about 10 hours later by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), but when they went to look in Ms Avraham’s safe room they found the door open and the bed tipped over.
They later heard that she had told a neighbour at about 11am “there’s a terrorist in my house”.
She had remarried a widowed kibbutz member years ago, helped raise his two young children and they had another child together, making Alma Avraham a mother of five.
Aviva Siegal
Aviva Seigel, 62, had lived with her husband Keith, 62, in the kibbutz of Kfar Aza for the last 40 years.
Their daughter, Shir Seigel, who lived with them, was away from the community on the morning of Oct 7.
She frantically tried to call her parents, but with no success.
The following day a Hamas video on the social messaging platform Telegram showed the couple being abducted into Gaza in their own car.
Keith, who also has US citizenship, is believed to remain there.
Aviva, who was born in South Africa, was described by her son-in-law as an extraordinary kindergarten teacher and a loving person.
Agam, Gal, Tal and Chen Goldstein-Almog
Three children from the Goldstein-Almog family – Agam, 17, Gal, 11, and Tal, 9 – were seized along with their mother, Chen, from Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
Their father, Nadav, and their eldest sister, Yam, were murdered on the same day while sheltering in the safe room of the family home.
Yam is believed to have stayed with her father in the room because he was recovering from surgery and was not very mobile.
She frantically sent messages for help as the terrorists roamed through their neighbourhood. Her family are still unsure of the sequence of events in the family home.
Chen is believed to have spent her birthday on Oct 23 in Gaza – the same day her daughter and husband were buried.
It’s not the first time the family has been blighted by terrorism. Five members of the Almog family were killed during a suicide bombing in the city of Haifa in 2003.
Ofri, Yuval, Uriya and Hagar Brodetz
Hagar, 40, Ofri, 10, Yuval, 8 and Uriya Brodetz, 4, were abducted from the kibbutz of Kfar Aza on Oct 7.
Avihai Brodutch, the father and husband, did his best to defend the kibbutz while his loved ones sheltered in the safe room, but when he returned, wounded, to look for his family they were gone.
He thought they were dead, but found out days later they had been abducted.
He said at the time: “I felt like I won the lottery.”
Daughter Ofri turned 10 in captivity. Meanwhile her father became one of the more vocal family members in the campaign to bring home the hostages, one of the first to sit outside the defence ministry in Tel Aviv demanding their return.
“Do you know why my family was abducted to Gaza?” Brodutch yelled in a Channel 12 interview on Nov 11. “Because there wasn’t an army to defend us. Hamas is tiny next to Israel the giant,” he said.
Dafna and Ella Elyakim
Sisters Dafna Elyakim, 15, and Ella, eight, were kidnapped by terrorists who livestreamed the storming of the girls’ father Noam’s home in Nahal Oz
Noam, his partner, Dikla Arava, and her 16-year-old son, Tomer, were also captured but their bodies were later discovered near the Gaza border.
Dafna and Ella were presumed to be alive after an unverified photo of them in Gaza appeared on a Telegram channel.
They were in clothes that weren’t their own and Ella had two fingers bandaged.
Their mother, Maayan, told The Telegraph earlier this month that the wait was getting “harder and harder” with each passing day.
“I think about what I will say to my girls when I see them, but I don’t know,” she said. “It won’t be like coming back from holiday, they will be coming back from Hell.”
Roni Krivoi
Roni Krivoi, 25, who holds dual Israeli and Russian citizenship, was working as a sound technician at the Supernova music rave, where hundreds were massacred by Hamas on Oct 7.
His sister Julia later said that Roni had initially succeeded in running away from the gunmen and had hidden in a pit.
He texted that he was OK, and at 11am he sent his location, but an hour later someone answered his phone in Arabic and cut off the conversation.
He is the youngest of three siblings from a Russian-Israeli family in Karmiel and was said to be always travelling around the country looking for work.
He had arrived at the festival the previous day to help set it up.
His father has described him as someone who has nine lives, having survived two car crashes, a fall into a manhole and other accidents.
