By Anadolu Staff
JERUSALEM (AA) - A freed Israeli hostage said that Hamas fighters had protected her during Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
Chen Goldstein-Almog, 48, and her 17-year-old daughter Agam Goldstein-Almog along with young boys Gal, 11, and Tal, 9, were taken captive during a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7.
The four were set free under an agreement between Hamas and Israel last month, which saw the release of 81 Israelis and 24 foreigners in exchange for 240 Palestinians, including 71 women, and 169 children.
Chen recounted that the hostages were staying somewhere behind a supermarket when Israeli airstrikes hit nearby.
“Our guards, our captors, the terrorists, were on top of us, protecting us with their bodies from the strikes,” Chen said.
“We were very valuable to them,” she added.
The Israeli woman recalled asking her captors if they were going to kill them, “and they would tell us: We will die before you.”
“[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu wanted to overthrow Hamas, but if our forces killed the two Hamas guards who were with me, what would become of me?” her daughter Agam said.
“We have received answers for such questions here in Israel. Without our captors, we would have been killed by the fire of our own forces.”
The Israeli army said on Dec. 15 that its forces had mistakenly killed three Israeli hostages in the northern Gaza Strip.
Nearly 130 Israeli hostages are believed to be still held by Hamas and other Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, killing at least 20,424 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 54,036 others, according to health authorities in the enclave.
Around 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.
The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins with half of the coastal territory's housing stock damaged or destroyed, and nearly 2 million people displaced within the densely-populated enclave amid shortages of food and clean water.
*Writing by Ikram Kouachi in Ankara