A young Israeli woman held hostage by Hamas terrorists for 54 days has described how she was “caged like an animal” and had surgery performed on her injuries by a vet.
Tattoo artist Mia Schem, 21, was abducted during the horrors of the October 7 attacks when militants stormed Israel from Gaza slaughtering hundreds at a music festival and in nearby Kibbutz.
Hamas took more than 250 people hostage, including children, babies and the elderly, and more than 100 are thought to still remain trapped inside Gaza after Israel launched a military offensive.
Ms Schem was released along with several other hostages at the end of November and has now spoken to Israeli television about her harrowing ordeal.
She told Channel 12 how she had surgery during her captivity where she had “no anaesthesia” and the procedure was carried out by a vet.
She said: “I choked up from the pain, and (the vet) looks at me and says, ‘Stop it! Or I’ll send you to the tunnels’.”
Ms Schem added she felt like an “animal in the safari” during the time she was caged by Hamas and that “It was the hardest thing in the world” dealing with the guilt she feels at being one of the lucky ones to have been released.
In an interview with another broadcaster, Channel 13, Ms Schem said she had been through a “Holocaust” and speaking about the people in Gaza she added: “Everyone there were terrorists. Entire families are in the service of Hamas.”
A Hamas official said yesterday that a “partial or temporary cessation of aggression” wouldn’t be enough to free the more than 100 hostages who Israel says remain in captivity in Gaza.
The Israeli-Hamas war has already driven around 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people from their homes, levelling the northern part of the territory and heightening fears about a similar fate for the south as Israel’s air and ground offensive widens.
Dozens were killed Thursday during Israel’s bombardment of cities, towns and refugee camps across Gaza.
More than 20,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants among the dead.
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