TEL AVIV : Former hostage Elma Avraham was discharged from Beer-Sheva’s Soroka Medical Center on Wednesday, more than five months after being released during a temporary ceasefire with Hamas.
Avraham was abducted from her home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7 and released with 17 other hostages on November 26.
“I had the strength to return to you, to see all of you, and mainly my children and family,” Avraham told reporters while insisting that the remaining hostages “must be freed now.”
Daughter Tali Amano said her 84-year-old mother had been “medically neglected” during her 50 days of captivity in Gaza. As a result, Avraham was airlifted directly to Soroka.
The family said she returned with a heart rate of just 40 beats per minute and a body temperature of 28 degrees Celsius.
The family tried to send medication to Avraham through the Red Cross as part of an agreement to expand humanitarian aid to Gaza in exchange for the delivery of the drugs. But the medicine was never delivered and soldiers found unopened boxes of the drugs labeled with the names of the hostages in Gaza’s Nasser Hospital.
At least 1,200 people were killed and 240 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Around 30 of the remaining 133 hostages are believed dead. (ANI/TPS)