The release of 69 hostages in the last four days of truce between Hamas and Israel, extended yesterday for two more days, are giving way to a slow trickle of testimonies about captivity in the Strip. Ruti Munder, 78, was one of the first freed hostages to recount her experience, this Monday in an interview with Israeli television Channel 13.

Munder was kidnapped on October 7 from her home in Nir Oz, a kibbutz in southern Israel, along with her daughter, grandson and husband. The latter still remains in Gaza. Some Hamas militants took them to the Strip in a vehicle, and a member of the organization covered them with a blanket that her grandson had brought from home and which, according to her, was intended to prevent them from seeing the militants in the surroundings.

In videos released on Sunday by the Israeli Army about the release of the hostages, we saw Ruti Munder with her daughter and grandson, who appears talking with some Israeli soldiers aboard a military helicopter heading to a hospital where they received medical attention. .

Ruti’s son died during the October 7 attack, but she received the news through a Hamas militant who was listening to the radio, as explained in the Channel 13 report. Even so, she said, she maintained hope that They would release her. “She was optimistic. I understood that if we came here, they would free us. I understood that if we were alive, it was because they had killed whoever they wanted in Nir Oz.”

This was announced to them by the top leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who according to Israeli television channels 12 and 13, visited the hostages in a tunnel and assured them that they would not be harmed. “You are safer here. Nothing will happen to you,” quoted these media, which did not reveal the source of the information.

At the beginning of her captivity, this elderly woman explained to Israeli television, “we were fine,” they ate “chicken with rice, all kinds of canned food and cheese,” and they even gave the children sweets. However, the siege that Israel has maintained on Gaza since the start of the war and which has caused shortages of food, fuel and other basic items, ended up affecting the hostages.

The menu changed when “the economic situation was not good and people were hungry,” Ruti said in the interview. She returned in good physical condition, like most captives. However, one of the freed hostages has undergone an operation, and an 84-year-old woman has been hospitalized and her life is in danger, due to the lack of adequate care in captivity.

Until now, few details have been revealed about the Hamas hostage experience. Ruti Munder’s statements confirm some information that had already been transmitted by relatives of the victims and provide a more extensive account of the conditions in which the hostages lived during those weeks. The room in which she was held was “suffocating” and the captives were prevented from opening the blinds. They slept in plastic chairs, with a sheet for 50 days, Munder told Israeli television.