'I thought just kill me quickly': Gaza hostage's 54 days in captivity

It was the 3rd clip they caught her.

Crouching successful a shallow dip successful the field, Moran Stella Yanai knew this clip was different.

"I heard 'Coo-coo!' and we raised our heads up - the terrorists were lasting [there], smiling," she said. "Everyone started to run, I jumped and broke my leg, and they caught me."

Warning: This nonfiction contains details immoderate readers whitethorn find disturbing.

Moran had been desperately trying to fell successful the sparse screen of a murphy field, arsenic Hamas gunmen raided the tract of the Nova euphony festival, a fewer miles from the Gaza border.

Hours earlier connected 7 October, the gunmen had burst done Gaza's perimeter fence, attacking Israeli communities.

Moran had already been caught doubly by groups of Hamas followers, she said, but had talked her mode retired by insisting she was Arab, and not Jewish.

The 3rd time, her captors were different.

"They didn't talk, they conscionable grabbed me," she remembered.

"They started to propulsion maine from 1 to the other, and enactment maine successful the car. Two terrorists successful the front, 4 successful the backseat, 3 much successful the [boot], and lone maine connected apical of everybody."

As they crossed the Gaza border, Moran glimpsed the assemblage connected the different broadside of the fence, earlier rapidly closing her eyes.

"It was similar a bull being entered into a immense arena," she told the BBC. "Everybody's blessed - the children, the women, the men. It was tons of people."

She felt the car stop, and the car doorway open.

"I felt idiosyncratic trying to propulsion my leg... All you tin deliberation of astatine that constituent is: delight fto it extremity fast. One deed to the head, and I volition not consciousness anything. If it's happening, marque it fast."

But the car doorway closed again, and the conveyance began to determination off, carrying Moran with it. She says she aboriginal learned that the radical holding her had sold her to Hamas.

It was the opening of 54 days successful captivity for Moran. During that time, she was transferred betwixt 7 antithetic locations, rapidly learning strategies to survive.

"You truly request to support your story," she explained. "What happens successful the archetypal location stays there, and doesn't travel with you to the 2nd location [or] the 3rd house."

Each time, she said, it was important to unreal that everything successful the erstwhile determination had been fine, and that her kidnappers had been her friends.

To hint astatine thing sexual, she believes, would person led to the radical sidesplitting some captor and captive.

At 1 point, she was held with different woman, who was 18 years aged and kidnapped portion she was barefoot and inactive successful her pyjamas. Moran, who understands a small Arabic, remembers overhearing their captors sermon who would instrumentality the women arsenic their wives.

She said they adjacent recovered the younger woman's parent among the different hostages and brought her in, asking for support to wed her daughter.

"When you determination from location to house, you request to beryllium 'examined' to spot that you're not hiding thing connected you," Moran said, sarcasm tilting crossed her face. "It's a 'really indispensable test', arsenic they explicate it to you."

She looks away, the soundlessness increasing betwixt us.

"I ever effort to explicate to radical that 'rape' is simply a truly large word," she said. "It's not lone the act. Even erstwhile a feline stands successful beforehand of your door, and you're sitting down, and he's staring astatine you for 10 minutes straight, 5 to six times a day, each day, for 54 days. Trust me; that's a rape."

Asked whether she was the unfortunate of intersexual battle portion held captive, Moran says she was not, but that she has heard from different women hostages that they were raped portion successful Gaza.

She described being beaten up by her captors, and the intelligence panic of being powerless successful a concern that could alteration successful a second.

One day, she said, they sat down to play cards with their captors.

"I was truthful hungry, I was trying to marque them laughter truthful they would bring america thing to eat," she remembered.

"[One of the captors] was mocking me. I got aggravated and said thing arsenic a joke. He runs to the different room, comes back, and points a weapon to my head, yelling astatine me, screaming that helium volition termination me, volition stroke my caput off."

After 54 days successful captivity, Moran Yanai was released successful a ceasefire woody past November, successful speech for Palestinian prisoners held successful Israel jails.

Her Hamas captors filmed the handover, wherever she and different hostages were seen smiling and thanking their kidnappers earlier boarding the Red Cross autobus retired of Gaza.

Many radical remarked astatine the clip that they seemed good and adjacent happy.

"They made america smile, and accidental convey you," Moran said. "Nobody heard the whispers that I'm saying to the lad adjacent to me: clasp on, 5 much minutes, don't commencement to outcry now, enactment smiling."

It's the archetypal clip successful implicit an hr recounting her communicative that Moran's composure fractures. Her tears sudden, accelerated and silent.

The infinitesimal she crossed the borderline to Egypt, she says, was the infinitesimal she had waited each those weeks successful captivity to cry.

"We couldn't [cry] erstwhile they were dragging america into Gaza, we couldn't bash it successful the houses, and that's the archetypal happening I promised myself - that the infinitesimal I measurement into my country, I'll shriek arsenic large arsenic I can, due to the fact that cipher volition instrumentality my dependable anymore."

Israeli officials judge astir 30 of the 133 hostages remaining successful Gaza are dead. Hopes of different ceasefire woody to unafraid their merchandise person dimmed.

Stories of the conditions - and intersexual assaults - successful captivity person gradually emerged from immoderate of those already released.

Moran says she mislaid 12% of her bodyweight, and her hair, during 54 days successful Gaza, and that her assemblage was covered with scars.

It is hard for her to ideate what it's similar for the hostages inactive held there, 5 months on.

"If this isn't solved, past no-one is free," she said. "I can't spell backmost to a regular routine; I can't spell backmost to anything."