An 85-year-old Israeli woman who was taken hostage by Hamas has described how the militants beat her with sticks and forced her to walk underground for miles after being kidnapped.
Yocheved Lifshitz, who was released on Monday by Hamas on humanitarian grounds, said that on Oct. 7, she was taken from her home in the Nir Oz kibbutz and driven away on a motorbike.
“I went through a hell that we’d never imagined. They [Hamas terrorists] rampaged through the kibbutz,” she said, adding that they beat her with sticks, which made it difficult to breathe.
Upon her arrival in Gaza, she said she was made to walk on wet ground before heading into an underground tunnel network, which she likened to a spiderweb. Her daughter Sharone helped translate from Hebrew to English as she gave her interview outside a Tel Aviv hospital on Tuesday.
