(Lod) “Hamas men kidnapped her”: like Mor Strikovski, dozens of Israelis are trying to locate their missing loved ones after the infiltrations of armed men from the Palestinian Islamist movement which resulted in hundreds of deaths and dozens of kidnappings in southern Israel.
In Lod, near Ben-Gurion International Airport, police and Israeli civil defense opened the “missing persons command center” to try to channel information.
“I needed to do something,” sighs Mor Strikovski, 42, in front of the center, visibly distressed. She came to report the disappearance of her 63-year-old mother, from Kibbutz Beeri where Hamas gunmen infiltrated on Saturday, killing several residents and taking dozens of others hostage before the intervention of Israeli special forces.
Like many people present at the center, Mme Strikovsky recognized his mother in a video that his cousin forwarded to him from Telegram messaging. “Hamas men kidnapped her from her house with her husband and two neighbors and took them out of the kibbutz. We think they are in Gaza,” she explained before adding that she hopes her mother is “treated well”.
The center asks them to bring personal items of the missing people, such as combs or toothbrushes, thus making it possible to extract DNA samples that can be cross-checked with the database of people whose deaths have been confirmed.
Social networks
Many Israelis turned to social networks on Saturday to try to find their loved ones, like Yifat Zailer, 37, who posted photographs of her cousin, Shiri Bivas, a resident of Nir Oz, a kibbutz, on Facebook. located two kilometers from the Gaza Strip, “probably kidnapped” with her two children aged nine months and three years.
Here again, “the only confirmation” for Mme Zailer is a video posted on social networks showing the mother and her two children in the Palestinian enclave.
M’s husbandme Bivas, Yarden, and his parents, in poor health, have not been located. “We want to know how they are, we want them to return safe and sound,” said M.me Zailer in tears to an AFP journalist.
The appeal of a German-Israeli woman, Ricarda Louk, to find her daughter, Shani, was widely shared, notably by the German newspaper Bild.
“We received a video in which we can clearly see our daughter, unconscious, in the car of Palestinians crossing the Gaza Strip,” said Ms.me Louk in a video message in German.
The images show a semi-naked young woman lying face down in the back of a pickup truck. “I ask you to help us if you have any information,” implores the mother of the 22-year-old girl.
According to the German magazine SpiegelShani Louk’s parents were informed by their daughter’s bank, domiciled in Tel Aviv, that her credit card had been used in Gaza.
“Worst Nightmares”
Adva Adar, also learned through social networks that her grandmother, Yaffa, aged 85 and also from Kibbutz Nir Oz, had been kidnapped by Hamas. “I can’t imagine how scared and uncomfortable she is. We don’t know where she is, or if she has food or water,” she said.
“She is not in good health. She needs her medicine […] Even in our worst nightmares, we would never have imagined this,” Adva Adar added through tears.
The Palestinian movement has taken “more than 100 prisoners,” according to the Israeli government.
Ester Borochov, 19, participated in a rave party Saturday morning near the Gaza Strip, an event during which Hamas shot and killed dozens of young people and took hostage. “They started shooting at us at point blank range, I managed to accelerate and pass between the terrorists,” she told Israeli television channel Channel 12.
His car was finally stopped by gunfire. “A young man took us in his Jeep, they shot him, he lost consciousness and his car overturned in a ditch. We pretended to be dead, me and my friend for two and a half hours in the car which had overturned before help arrived. […] That’s how we survived.”