IDF soldiers released from captivity were held by senior Hamas terrorist – report

Former hostages were not aware of high-ranking position of captor, who apparently kept them as human shields, tried to extract information on border security

Released hostage soldier Agam Berger, right, meets Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy, and Liri Albag, fellow soldiers also freed from Hamas captivity, at Rabin Medical Center, January 30, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)
Released hostage soldier Agam Berger, right, meets Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy, and Liri Albag, fellow soldiers also freed from Hamas captivity, at Rabin Medical Center, January 30, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)

The five IDF surveillance soldiers recently released from captivity in the Gaza Strip were held hostage there by a senior member of Hamas’s military wing, according to a Tuesday report.

Naama Levy, Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Agam Berger and Liri Albag were not aware of their captor’s rank at the time and only found out when they had been returned to Israel, Kan reported.

The unsourced report did not give the name of the Hamas member who was apparently using the soldiers as human shields.

According to the report, the five women were held in an apartment somewhere in Gaza City.

They have described the Hamas member as the dominant figure in the apartment, who issued orders to others who were there. He would also bring them food and make sure they could shower while “manipulating their feelings” and trying to get them to talk, the report said.

All five soldiers were abducted from Israel on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led thousands of terrorists in an invasion of southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The attackers abducted 251 people, also mostly civilians, as hostages to the Gaza Strip.

Kan reported that the soldiers have said that the senior Hamas official played “the good cop” role while trying to draw information from them about IDF activity close to the border in the days before the October 7 attack.

Clockwise, from top left: Daniella Gilboa, Karina Ariev, Naama Levy, Agam Berger and Liri Albag, who were taken hostage by Hamas on October 7, 2023. (Courtesy)

According to the report, the released soldiers have in the past few days undergone “simulations,” though it did not specify what that entailed.

They are expected to be discharged on Wednesday from the hospital where they have received care since they returned to Israel.

Channel 12 reported that all five have asked to return to serve in the army, though not as surveillance soldiers.

Relatives told the network that the army responded that they needed more time to recover, and it was still too early to take such a step.

A return to service would not be unprecedented. Ori Megidish, who was abducted from the same Nahal Oz base and then rescued by the IDF in October 2023, returned to serve in the army four months after her rescue.

Seven surveillance soldiers were abducted from the Nahal Oz base: Megidish; Noa Marciano, who was killed in captivity; and Ariev, Gilboa, Albag and Levy, who were freed five days before Berger. During the October 7 attack, 15 surveillance soldiers were slain in Nahal Oz.

Screen capture from video of Merav Leshem Gonen, mother of released hostage Romi Gonen, during an interview with Channel 12, February 4, 2025. (Channel 12: Used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

Meanwhile, Merav Leshem Gonen, mother of hostage survivor Romi Gonen, gave a round of media interviews to Hebrew outlets that broadcast previews ahead of the full conversations that are to be aired on Wednesday.

Romi, 24, was among the first hostages to be freed from Gaza as part of the current ceasefire, a long and uncertain process envisioned at eventually ending the war. Like many others, Romi, a civilian, was taken captive at the Nova music festival, where the attackers massacred 364 people.

Leshem Gonen said her daughter was not given proper treatment for a gunshot wound to her right arm that she suffered during the attack, and was unable to use the limb during the more than 15 months she was a hostage.

She also said that her daughter lost around 10 kilograms in weight and suffered significant muscle deterioration, symptoms that other released hostages have also shown.

“There was deliberate starvation,” she told the Walla outlet.

Romi Gonen (right) and her mother, Meirav Leshem Gonen, embrace after Romi’s return from Hamas captivity, January 19, 2025. (IDF)

Speaking to Channel 12, she spoke of mental and physical abuse Hamas guards inflicted on her daughter.

Leshem Gonen said that her daughter’s guards mocked her about the open wound she had in her arm when she was brought into Gaza. When she was given something to clean the injury — but no anesthetic or painkillers — the terrorists “stood around and laughed at her,” she said.

Due to the injuries to her hand, which were not properly treated while she was in captivity, Romi will need to undergo complex surgery and a lengthy recovery, her mother said.

“We still don’t know anything, but from the little we have heard it is 99 percent difficult things that are not easy to listen to,” Leshem Gonen said.

“You can’t explain what they went through,” she said, adding that the hostages, whether aboveground or in the tunnels, were kept in darkness.

As a result, Romi looked gray in the first few days after her release, Leshem Gonen said.

But she said Romi has talked about her captivity with “a lot of grace and a lot of smiles, so it makes it easier.”

A passerby looks at photos of the hostages in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, January 23, 2025. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)

Seventy-six of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.

Hamas has so far released 18 hostages — civilians, soldiers and Thai nationals — during a ceasefire that began in January.

The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that.

Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.

Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza in January.

Most Popular
read more: