Following her rescue by the Israeli army, new details have emerged about the captivity of 26-year-old Hamas hostage Noa Argamani.
According to the Israeli news site “ynet”, the young woman was taken from apartment to apartment after her kidnapping by Hamas. All of the hiding places were in the Gaza Strip.
On Saturday, she and three other hostages were freed in a dramatic military operation. Argamani said it was only when she saw the Israeli flag on the soldiers’ uniforms that she realized they had actually come to rescue her.
According to the army, the liberation operation resulted in fierce clashes with armed Palestinians. According to the Hamas-controlled health authority, 274 Palestinians were killed in the operation.
After her kidnapping in October, Argamani was initially held together with two male hostages who were later killed, the news site ynet reported. One is said to have died in an Israeli attack, the other was murdered by the kidnappers.
According to the media report, Argamani told her family that she saw a rocket hit the house and was afraid for her life.
Argamani said she learned Arabic during the first weeks of her captivity and now understands and speaks it well.
During the first period of her captivity, when she lived with other hostages, including Moran Stella Yanai, who was released at the end of November, she learned Arabic and was a kind of “representative” of the other hostages, and was able to use her language skills to help get things.
Argamani, who was rescued from an apartment belonging to Palestinian civilians in the Nuseirat refugee district, according to Israeli sources, had to cook and wash dishes for the family, which she also did on the morning of the rescue.
Since her release after 246 days in captivity, Argamani has been intensively involved in caring for her mother in the hospital, the news site said. The woman, who is from China, is terminally ill with a grade 4 brain tumor.
In recent months, the woman had repeatedly asked to see her daughter again. On Sunday, Argamani was alone with her mother in the treatment room for two hours. Argamani’s father reported that at the first meeting on Saturday, the mother was barely able to respond to her daughter due to her serious condition. “I think she understood that Noa was being released,” said the father. “She just couldn’t tell her what she wanted to tell her for eight months.”