SAFE AT LAST
My Emily has lost weight but she is doing OK, says dad Tom Hand as he breaks silence on girl’s ordeal as Hamas hostage
Emily was also comforted and hugged by her half-sister Natali as they reunited
DISTRAUGHT Tom Hand spoke for the first time last night of the terrible toll taken on his daughter Emily during her 50-day Hamas hostage ordeal.
Tom, 63, revealed the youngster — who turned nine inside the terror tunnels of Gaza — had “lost a lot of weight”.
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And he spoke of his hope she would recover physically and mentally after being released among 13 innocents from the besieged strip.
Tom said: "We got Emily back from the hands of the Gazan terrorists.
“She has lost a lot of weight from her face and body but is generally doing better than we expected.
“We’re still fighting . . . as they promised they would not release children without mothers but they did not [keep the promise].
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“We’re in the hospital taking care of Emily and we’d like to thank everyone who helped and supported us throughout the 50 days.
“You’ve been great. We can’t do it without you.”
However, there was fury in Israel over the weekend after a tweet by Irish premier Leo Varadkar referring to Emily as having been “lost”.
The Taoiseach welcomed her release as a “day of enormous joy and relief for Emily Hand and her family”.
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He said: “An innocent child who was lost has now been found.”
Israel’s foreign minister Eli Cohen accused Mr Varadkar of needing a “reality check”. He said Emily was not lost but kidnapped.
In a video released on Sunday night, Emily is seen being comforted and hugged tightly by her half-sister Natali, 26.
Her dad told her tearfully: “You’re safe now.”
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Emily was snatched from bed by Hamas terrorists on a sleepover during their October 7 attack on Israel.
At one stage, she was presumed dead by dad Tom.
But they daughter were reunited in an Israeli hospital on Saturday after she was released.
Emily, in a pink jumper and leggings, ran into her dad’s outstretched arms and emotions ran high moments later as Tom held her close in a tender moment captured on video.
Dublin-born Tom, who lives on kibbutz Be’eri, embraced Emily tightly on a sofa as she clutched a teddy.
Emily was freed alongside fellow child captive Hila Rotem, 12, but their captors did not free Hila’s 54-year-old mother Raya.
The mum’s omission was in breach of a deal that mothers and children should be released together and was one of the reasons why Saturday’s release was delayed.
Thirteen more hostages were freed yesterday — four women and nine children —- plus three foreign national understood to be Thai.
Hamas said it had earlier also released Russian-Israeli hostage Ron Kriboy, a sound engineer, “as a gesture of appreciation of Russian President Putin's support for the Palestinian cause”.
Sunday's third hostage releases batch included traumatised Dafna Elyakim, 14 and her eight year-old sister Ela Elyakim. They are likely to need intensive counselling.
The pair witnessed their father’s shooting at their Nahal Oz home and sat frozen in terror as he bled to death.
Mum Chen Goldstein-Almog, 49 and children Agam, 17, Gal, 11 and Tal, nine also returned home to Israel.
The family, from Kfar Aza, were all thought to have been killed in the massacres — until it became clear only Chen’s husband Nadav, 48, and daughter, Yam, 20, had been murdered.
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Aviva Sigal, 62, was also freed after being kidnapped with her 64-year-old husband Keith - who is still in Gaza.
Also among those freed on Sunday was 84-year-old Alma Avraham, who is in hospital suffering from a “serious medical condition".
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