Horror conditions Hamas hostages like Emily Damari endured – from lice, buckets as toilets & living on half a pita a day
HOSTAGES have endured horrific conditions at the hands of Hamas thugs during their 15-month nightmare.
Freed hostages have previously revealed the harsh conditions they survived in Gaza included physical and emotional abuse as well as humiliation, lice and starvation.
And as the first three hostages -including Brit Emily Damari – were released, there is no doubt they will need time to recover from horrors they suffered over their 470 days in captivity.
Brave Emily was pictured smiling as she was released following her ordeal before she was reunited with her mum.
The Spurs fan showed her bullet-ravaged hand missing two fingers after she was shot when she was snatched from the Kfar Aza kibbutz village on October 7.
The fearless Brit put on a brave face despite the squalid conditions she suffered during her 15-month nightmare.
Emily was kidnapped in her own car and taken into Gaza, after the terrorists shot dead her beloved dog Choocha in her arms .
She was forced to use a bucket as a toilet and starved as captives were given half a pita bread a day to eat.
Hamas hostages released in November 2023, revealed captives were not allowed to wash or change clothes with many of them contracting lice.
They reported the level of sanitation was atrocious with big groups of hostages being forced to share a toilet with no water causing disease to spread.
A hostage said he was forced to eat wet toilet paper in a desperate bid to survive as he was held captive underground.
Another Hamas victim revealed she was sexually abused “under the threat of a gun” after she was released in November.
The fearless 28-year-old posted she is “the happiest person in the world” in the first Instagram post after she was freed.
But the dad of another freed Hamas hostage fears Emily will be “mentally, physically and spiritually broken” after 470 agonising days in Hamas captivity.
Tom Hand, 64, the dad of eight-year-old Emily who was released after 50 days in captivity said Emily Damari will take years to recover after the horror she survived in Gaza.
He told The Sun: “My Emily was held for 50 days but she was never in a tunnel – she was above ground all the time and wasn’t with the ‘hard-core’ Hamas.
“But Emily Damari – I don’t know – she was probably in tunnels and has probably had a much worse experience than my Emily ever did and for way longer. Times ten…
“She’s also older so her fears of being raped or tortured on on a level way higher than Emily’s so until she’s able to talk and tell her experiences there’s no way of knowing what she went through.
“Emily, even at eight years old understood exactly what had happened to her and knows afterwards what had happened to her and coped – it was the typical resilience of kids.
“My little girl was lucky, she was able to bounce back, but some of the other kids did not – they’re introverted, they don’t want to be with their friends and they stay in the house.
“I’m 100 per cent sure it’s going to take Emily Damari longer to start the process of being able to talk about what happened to her.
“We don’t know what she’s been through but it’s been a very long period and she’s going to be mentally broken, physically broken and spiritually broken.
“That amount of time will break your spirit, not knowing whether you are going to live that day, every day for 470 days. That takes a very large toll.”
Speaking of his daughter’s own experience Tom said the first challenge for freed hostages will be to control their hunger after months of being starved.
He said little Emily had to be controlled to stop her gorging herself sick and gradually re-introduced to the sun.
He added: “But the biggest sign of her starting to recover was when she slowly stopped whispering.
“She was still in the frame of mind that if she spoke above a whisper she would be stabbed.
Tom said Emily Damari – like his daughter – will need treatment from an array of therapists and psychiatrists.
Previous accounts from freed hostages have mentioned abysmal living conditions and minimal food.
People reported being given no more than two dates for breakfast and half a pita for dinner a day.
Some said they had been reduced to licking their plates in hunger.
Philippine hostage Jimmy Pacheco feared he wouldn’t survive as he was given just half a pita a day and salty water during his six-and-a-half-week ordeal.
He said he was left having to consume wet toilet paper to stay alive as he was held in a damp tunnel.
Jimmy told CBN Asia in November: “I told myself there was no way I would survive because I have a history of kidney problems.
“It looked like we were 40 metres underground, and that’s why the walls were damp.
“I attached the paper I had saved to the walls, until it got wet.
“Then I put it in my mouth and ate it – and that way my stomach wasn’t empty.”
Amit Soussana, 40, was taken hostage during the October 7 said she was guarded by two men and tied up by an iron chain to bars on a window for three weeks.
And another Israeli hostage snatched by Hamas on October 7 has revealed she was slapped, beaten and paraded through Gaza like a trophy.
Moran Yanai told The Sun she was constantly screamed at during her time as a hostage and abused as her evil captors interrogated her daily.
Speaking to The Sun at the time, Aviva Klompas, who runs Boundless Israel, said acts of physical abuse extended to children too.
She said: “You have children who were burned on the leg so that they would be recognisable if they tried to run away.
“You have incidents of a little boy being held in solitary confinement for 16 days, a small boy. Can you imagine what that’s done to his mental health?
“He was also forced, along with other children, to watch videos of the atrocities of the October 7th attacks, and when they cried they had guns held to their heads, and they were threatened.”
Four more hostages will be returned on the seventh day then every week for a period of four weeks.
Finally, 14 hostages will be returned in the sixth week from the group of 33 made up of 12 women and children, 10 men over the age of 50 and 11 younger men.
Negotiations will start again to secure the release of 65 hostages still in Gaza on the 16th day of the ceasefire.
What happened on October 7?
ON OCTOBER 7, 2023, Hamas launched a brutal surprise attack on Israel, marking one of the darkest days in the nation’s history.
Terrorists stormed across the border from Gaza, killing over 1,200 people — most of them civilians — and kidnapping 250 others, including women, children, and the elderly.
The coordinated assault saw heavily armed fighters infiltrate Israeli towns, kibbutzim, and military bases, unleashing indiscriminate violence.
Innocent families were slaughtered in their homes, and graphic footage of the atrocities spread across social media, leaving the world in shock.
And as well as attacking people in their homes, they stormed the Nova music peace festival – killing at least 364 people there alone.
The massacre triggered a swift and massive retaliatory response from Israel, escalating into a full-scale war.
The attack not only reignited long-standing tensions in the region but also left deep scars on both sides of the conflict, setting the stage for the 15 months of devastation that followed.