1 year ago
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Yocheved Lifshitz, the 85-year-old woman who was released after being held
hostage
by
Palestinian militants
in Gaza for 17 days, on Tuesday described being beaten while her captors took her away on a motorcycle.Lifshitz said she was marched through a network of subterranean tunnels under Gaza that she likened to "a spider web." She said that she was later treated relatively well, offering the first public account to emerge from the more than 200 hostages estimated to be held by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.
"I went through hell," she said, sitting in a wheelchair at a hospital in Tel Aviv amid a thicket of microphones. She was
freed
along with Nurit Cooper, 79, on Monday and transferred from Hamas custody to Israeli forces via the
International Committee for the Red Cross
and Egypt. Both of their husbands are still being held hostage in Gaza. Lifshitz's voice at times faltered as she recalled her abduction and the horrors suffered by her neighbours when Hamas attacked her town of Kibbutz Nir Oz. Many people stormed our homes, they beat people, some of them they abducted, like me," Lifshitz said. "It made no difference, they abducted the elderly and the young." "In my memory, I have these images all the time," she added later.
She said her kidnappers hauled her onto a motorcycle and beat her painfully in the ribs, making it hard for her to breathe, and also took away her watch. Lifshitz said that she and others were relatively well taken care of, given medicine and the same food as their captors. Fearing disease, her captors worked to sanitize the area, she said, and doctors would visit sporadically to check on them. nyt
English (US)