“The tunnel is like a tomb, it felt like we were buried alive.”
Amit Soussana is a young lawyer from Kfar Aza, one of the kibbutzim most battered by the Hamas attack.
There, where she lived, she was kidnapped on October 7 and remained in Gaza in the hands of terrorists for 55 days before being freed.
"We were held in inhumane conditions. No person - she tells the media in a feeble voice, for the first time since her release - should ever be subjected to such brutal and merciless treatment."
Amit, as everyone calls her, speaks in front of the remains of the house she lived in until that day in the so-called 'Young Adult Quarter' of the kibbutz, a string of small concrete structures and a small garden.
The scenery of the houses all around is ghostly: furniture, appliances, everyday objects thrown haphazardly, mattresses still stained with blood, charred walls and gazebos, dozens and dozens of bullet holes in the walls and even bullet casings.
On what remains of the buildings, relatives and friends have placed, as a souvenir, the photos of those who lived there: faces of young boys who were once smiling, now killed or kidnapped.
It is the phrase that now echoes throughout Israel.
“Bring them home.”
A short distance from where Amit speaks, cultivated fields divide Israel from Gaza: on the other side, in the Strip, you can glimpse Beit Lahia or Jabalya.
A double fence stands around Kfar Aza but on 7 October it did not serve to protect the kibbutz which was stormed at dawn by over 70 heavily armed Hamas militiamen.
The massacre was terrible: 74 Israelis killed, 19 kidnapped, 6 of whom are still in the Strip, 11 freed, including Amit.
However, two died in captivity: Alon Shamriz and Yotam Haim, both killed by mistake by the army in Gaza.
Yotam's jovial face and red hair stand out on the poster hanging on his former home, now reduced to a charred mass.
Amit Soussana said he tried to hide in the closet, but in vain.
Many like her were torn away from places or shelter rooms with grenades thrown by Hamas against the walls or by setting fire to the house.
Amit-she told-she defended herself desperately.
"I continued to resist until finally - she explained - they tied my arms and legs and dragged me away. It took more than an hour to take me to Gaza."
Photos and videos on the web have repeatedly shown the terrible scene.
"Being a prisoner for 55 days seemed like an eternity.
This is why I can't even imagine what it feels like after 115 days." Mandy Damari is a mother: she saved herself on 7 October, her daughter Emily, 27, is a hostage in Gaza. "Now - she says in her voice cracked - is located in a tunnel, 40 meters underground.
Close your eyes and imagine your daughter being killed, beaten, abused, both psychologically and sexually". Words that freeze those who listen. Avichai Brodetz had his wife and three children, aged between 4 and 10, held hostage by Hamas in Gaza for 51 days."The prisoners over there are alive and don't have much time.
I hope - she said - that there will be no more fighting but if there is a need the war can wait, the hostages cannot.
And I ask the media and the international community to put pressure on everyone."
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