Hamas forced a 12-year-old Israeli hostage to watch footage of the terror group’s October 7 massacre while being held hostage inside Gaza, his aunt has said.
Deborah Cohen told BFMTV that Eitan Yahalomi, who has French and Israeli citizenship and who was released on Monday, experienced ‘horrors’ in captivity.
‘They are monsters. When he arrived in Gaza, all the Gazans, they all beat him. We are talking about a 12-year-old boy!’ she told the French TV channel.
War crimes
She also said that gunmen would threaten children, including nine-year-old Irish Israeli girl Emily Hand, with rifles ‘to shut them up’ if they cried.
‘He went through horrors,’ she said, adding she was horrified to learn that her nephew had been forced to watch GoPro footage of Hamas’s massacre, in which the terrorists killed around 1,200 people across southern Israel on October 7.
‘The Hamas terrorists forced him to watch films of the horrors, the kind that no one wants to see, they forced him to watch them,’ she said.
‘We were very happy yesterday, but now that I know about this, I’m worried. It’s inconceivable, I don’t know who could do such things.’
Footage of the attacks has been shared widely online, and shows extreme acts of violence, including attacks against innocent civilians in their homes.
How many people have been killed by Israeli bombardment?
The terror attack prompted Israel to launch an air and ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
The Israeli bombardment has killed more than 15,000 in Gaza, according to the enclave’s health authorities.
The war came to a pause for the first time since October 7 on Friday, when Israel and Hamas reached a four-day truce agreement, in which both sides also said they would release hostages and prisoners.
It was set to end Monday, but was extended by two further days at the last minute.
