KIBBUTZ NIR OZ: Standing within the ruins of her residence within the Nir Ozfarming village on the Gaza border, Sharon Alony Cunio gazed on the distant skyline of Khan Younis, the Palestinian metropolis the place Hamas militants dragged her greater than three months in the past. Her husband, David, stays captive in Gaza.
He’s kilometers away however fully out of attain.
Cunio and her 3-year-old twins had been launched from Gaza on Nov. 27. They’re bodily wholesome, secure. However she will’t cease serious about her husband’s final phrases to her. He was skinny and frail, wounded within the leg, because the household embraced for a last time in captivity.
“Battle for me. Don’t surrender,” she mentioned he informed her. “Please yell what I can’t yell. I’m scared as hell.”
David Cunio is amongst scores of captives believed to be alive in Gaza after 120 hostages, together with his spouse and daughters, had been freed throughout a weeklong cease-fire.
As days spin by, punctuated by experiences that different hostages have died in Hamas captivity, these freed have more and more spoken out in regards to the circumstances they endured in Gaza. With the plight of the remaining hostages gripping the nation’s consideration, those that survived hope to strain the federal government into reaching one other deal.
In an interview with The Related Press, Sharon described the Hamas assault and her time in captivity, most of which she mentioned was spent in a hospital — bolstering Israel’s claims that Hamas has abused protected medical places for army functions.
Her women, Emma and Julie, don’t but perceive what occurred to them after Hamas militants rampaged by means of southern Israel on Oct, 7, killing 1,200 individuals and kidnapping 250. The Hamas assault prompted a blistering Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip.
In captivity, she informed the ladies the near-constant sounds of bombardment had been simply thunderstorms and the militants who guarded their door had been their protectors. Now, when it rains in Yavne, the central Israel metropolis the place the three are staying with Sharon’s dad and mom, the ladies ask, “Mommy, the place are the booms?”
On the morning Hamas militants attacked their residence, the household cowered of their fortified secure room. David Cunio muscled the door shut in opposition to the intruders, his spouse mentioned, however they ultimately flicked on the gasoline and lit the home ablaze.
As smoke poured in, David grabbed Julie and climbed out the window, leaving Sharon and her sister, Danielle, within the secure room with two kids. Armed males stood outdoors.
“I began to lose consciousness,” Sharon recalled. “At that time, Danielle shook me and mentioned, ‘Let’s open the window and get out. It’s a lot better in the event that they shoot us. Then there shall be no ache, no struggling, as a substitute of watching us all choke to dying in right here.’”
However militants didn’t shoot them. As an alternative, they dragged them, with 4 different hostages, to Gaza on a tractor stolen from the kibbutz. Within the melee, the household misplaced one of many twins — Emma was gone, and so they feared it was for good.
Sharon, David and Julie spent 10 days in a Palestinian residence, guarded by two Hamas militants. Their captors mentioned they had been in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second largest metropolis, Sharon mentioned.
“I had a psychological breakdown, I had tics, I had panic assaults,” she informed AP.
On day 9 of captivity, the home subsequent door was bombed. Because the explosion despatched the partitions round them crashing in, David and Sharon climbed on high of Julie, defending her. Glass pierced Sharon’s scalp.
Quickly after, the captors moved the household. Sharon mentioned militants coated her husband in a white sheet so he regarded like a corpse and dressed her in conventional Arab garments. They wrapped Julie in a material and pushed her into Sharon’s arms. They packed the household into an ambulance and introduced them to a hospital Sharon mentioned she now acknowledges from the information as Nasser, in Khan Younis.
Three days later, Sharon mentioned, she heard crying outdoors their room. She immediately acknowledged the cries as Emma’s.
“This man simply handed me Emma, like she’s a field or one thing. And I used to be shocked,” she mentioned. “ I used to be sure she was useless. She was panicking and crying. I couldn’t imagine that they introduced her again to us.”
Reunited, the household spent the following few weeks in a room on the hospital’s first flooring. Stacked containers separated the hostage part from the remainder of the hospital flooring, Sharon mentioned. She described sleeping with the ladies on a small mattress, utilizing a pillow stained with blood. At one level, she mentioned, 12 hostages had been packed within the tiny room.
The household quickly came upon they had been being held close to two extra rooms of captives, practically 30 in whole. Captors ultimately let the hostages spend time in each other’s rooms, Cunio mentioned.
The Israeli army has come underneath worldwide criticism for the compelled evacuations and closures of greater than half of Gaza’s hospitals throughout its offensive, leaving the medical system close to collapse. Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of storing weapons and hiding hostages in hospitals in an try and justify army operations on the amenities.
Cunio mentioned some captives acquired medical remedy from hospital workers. When one of many captives in her room grew sick, she mentioned, he was taken away, returning with an IV in his arm. One other younger hostage underwent leg surgical procedure, she mentioned.
Meals didn’t come on an everyday schedule, however most days captors introduced them two meals. Sharon described plates of spicy rice topped with meat, and often-moldy pita bread with feta. Some days, no meals got here in any respect. Cunio mentioned the adults usually gave up their meals to feed the twins. They break up the bread into quarters, in case no meals got here the following day.
Cunio misplaced 11 kilos (24 kilos) in Gaza and mentioned every member of her household suffered from vomiting and diarrhea at the very least as soon as.
“Lots of the instances, the ladies had been simply crying, saying ‘I’m hungry,’” she mentioned. “It was devastating.”
Once they wanted to make use of the lavatory, they knocked on the door and waited for captors to open it. Generally they waited 5 minutes, different instances hours, Sharon mentioned, and the ladies typically relieved themselves within the sink or trash can of the windowless, humid room. Each time they left, they needed to cowl themselves with a hijab.
For the final week of captivity, militants moved the hostages into an outer room, with a window. Cunio mentioned she noticed rows of displaced Palestinians camped across the hospital.
The captives had been informed to not make noise. At evening, Sharon mentioned, they cracked the window for contemporary air. It grew chilly, however the hostages had blankets. The women had been taken captive in underwear and tank tops, and one other hostage usual lengthy pajama pants for them out of additional clothes.
Sharon mentioned David, an electrician born and raised in Nir Oz, blamed himself — he was the rationale the household lived so near the Gaza border. Sharon cried on a regular basis, she mentioned, and David as soon as beat himself till he bled contained in the mouth. Different instances, he managed a little bit of levity.
“I’d inform him, ‘You’re one of the best man I’ve ever recognized,’” Sharon mentioned. “And he informed me, ‘It’s about time you figured that out.’”
Sooner or later, Sharon mentioned, David was pulled out of the room to talk with a Hamas officer. The person informed him Israel had determined to carry again solely girls and kids, Sharon recalled, and David can be taken someplace with the opposite males.
“We sat there for 3 hours, simply hugging. Me, him, and the ladies,” Cunio mentioned. “I’m begging him to not go and begging to stick with him. The women are crying. ‘Why are you leaving? Why are they taking Daddy? Can they take different dads? Why do it’s a must to take ours?’”
Three days later, Crimson Cross autos ferried Cunio and the ladies again to Israel.
Now, Sharon mentioned she received’t have the ability to sleep by means of the evening till her husband comes residence.
“Every thing is filled with blame,” she mentioned. ”Having a shower, consuming scorching meals, smoking a cigarette, taking part in with our women, being outdoors when he’s within the tunnels.”
On Monday, Sharon toured Kibbutz Nir Oz — the place militants killed some 20 individuals and took greater than 80 hostage — for the second time since her launch. She received excited as acquainted faces appeared, with neighbors accumulating belongings from ransacked homes. Everybody had a narrative — a son nonetheless held hostage, a partner murdered.
Sharon’s previous cat, Elvis, sauntered up. He survived the onslaught, nuzzling into Cunio’s leg as the 2 reunited.
Sharon mentioned the household received’t return to the kibbutz, whose idyllic flowering paths and orange groves now give technique to properties pockmarked by bullet holes. On the horizon, she sees pillars of smoke rising from the place she believes her husband is held.
For now, Sharon sends the ladies to preschool every day and hugs them at evening, soothing them by means of their nightmares.
When she will get a second to herself, she turns to an archive of her husband’s voicemails. “I really like you, you’re one of the best,” he says within the one she will’t assist however play time and again.
“I promised him I’d battle for him,” Sharon mentioned. “I received’t cease till he comes again.”
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