A ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip has taken effect, pausing a 15-month war that has brought devastation and political change to the Middle East.
As part of the deal, three Israeli hostages are due to be released later on Sunday, named by Hamas as Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari.
Emily Damari, 28
Hamas kidnapped Damari, who has joint British and Israeli citizenship, from her apartment in the Kfar Aza kibbutz on 7 October 2023, along with 37 other residents of the community on the Gaza border. She is the only hostage with British citizenship who is being held.
Her last message to her family on the day of her kidnapping was at about 10am, when she managed to send a text to say Hamas were in her neighbourhood and shooting close to her apartment.
According to friends and family, based on witness evidence from the attack, Damari suffered injuries and was abducted while blindfolded in her own car.
She was shot in the hand and “injured by shrapnel in her leg, blindfolded, bundled into the back of her own car, and driven back to Gaza”, her mother, Mandy Damari, later said.
In December, Mandy told the BBC: “She’s suffering from gunshot wounds to her hand and her leg … I worry every day, I worry every second because in the next second, she could be murdered, just because she’s there.”
A fan of Tottenham Hotspur football club, Damari grew up in south-east London but later moved to Israel. She is the granddaughter of Sidney Moss, who was for many years the managing director of the UK’s Jewish Chronicle.
Romi Gonen, 24
Gonen, a former volunteer scouts counsellor, was attending the Nova music festival, a dance party close to the Gaza border, when she was abducted after being shot in the hand by Hamas gunmen on 7 October. Three of her friends who were with her at the festival were murdered.
Kidnapped while attempting to flee the site of the festival in a car, she managed to speak to her mother during her abduction. “They shot me, Mom, and I’m bleeding,” she told her mother, Meirav Leshem Gonen. “Everyone in the car is bleeding.”
While the car Gonen was travelling in was later found empty, the signal for her phone was traced to Gaza.
A month after the attack, one of the hostages released in November 2023 as part of a previous ceasefire deal told Gonen’s family that Romi was alive but that her hand was in a bad condition.
“Her hand does not function. Her fingers are barely moving and are changing colours – and that was 10 weeks ago,” the family told the Daily Mail.
Doron Steinbrecher, 31
Steinbrecher, a veterinary nurse, was abducted from her home in Kfar Aza when gunmen entered her safe room during the attack. She told her family during a phone call “they’re here” as she was seized, still in her pyjamas, and taken to Gaza.
Steinbrecher was known to be alive in January of last year when she appeared in a Hamas video with two other captives, Daniella Gilboa and Karina Ariev, pleading for their release.
During the attack she was in touch with her sister, Yamit Ashkenazi, and her parents, who were also in their home on the kibbutz when it was attacked.
At about 10.30am, Doron told her parents that she was scared. A little later she sent a voice message to friends: “They’ve arrived – they have me.”
