From the Liveblog of
Monday, September 29, 2025
Ex-hostage Eliya Cohen hails IDF killing of Hamas terrorist who abducted him
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Eliya Cohen and his fiancée welcome the news that the IDF eliminated the Hamas terrorist who abducted Cohen from a roadside bomb shelter and took him as a hostage to Gaza during the group’s October 7, 2023, attack.
“Wow, I think I’m the happiest person in the world right now,” says Cohen’s fiancée Ziv Aboud, in a story posted to Instagram.
“The one who abducted Eliya from the shelter, who pulled him out from among all the dead bodies, and loaded him into the pickup truck like he was a sack of potatoes, and was there on the truck to Gaza — the IDF took him down,” she says.
Aboud pans the camera to Cohen, and asks what he has to say about it. He thanks God, and says more terrorists are “next in line.”
The military and Shin Bet announced earlier today that Hassan Mahmoud Hassan Hussein, a commander for the terror group’s elite Nukhba force, was killed in a recent airstrike in the Gaza Strip.
Hussein, alongside another Nukhba force commander, Muhammad Abu Attawi, led the attack on a bomb shelter near Re’im where partygoers from the Nova music festival had fled to.
Four people, including Cohen, were taken hostage alive from the shelter and 16 were murdered. Seven managed to survive and were later rescued.
The Times of Israel Community.