From the Liveblog of
Monday, February 17, 2025
Freed hostage tells David Cunio’s family that they recently saw him alive in Gaza
One of the recently released hostages has informed the family of captive David Cunio that they recently saw him alive in Gaza.
Cunio, 34, was taken hostage from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during Hamas’s October 7 onslaught.
David was abducted along with his wife, Sharon Aloni Cunio, 33, their 3-year-old twin daughters, Yuli and Emma, as well as Sharon’s sister, Danielle Aloni, 44, and her daughter, Emilia, 5, who were visiting them for the holiday weekend.
Sharon and the twins were released on November 27 as part of a temporary ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar and the United States between Hamas and Israel. Danielle and Emilia were released on November 24.
“We indeed received a sign of life. David is alive,” Sharon Cunio tells Channel 12. “And that gives us so much strength and so much air to breathe. There is no way to describe how much happiness I’ve been feeling from the moment that we heard the news. It gives us renewed strength to fight until he is returned, until everybody is returned.”
Asked what, if anything, she knows about her husband’s condition, she says it is “extremely urgent” that he be returned, noting that this was the first sign of life from him since the November 2023 weeklong deal. She says it is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s responsibility to urgently return her husband, and to expedite the entire process of releases. “No more batches” of a few hostages at a time, she urges.
David Cunio’s brother Ariel is also still held hostage. Neither David nor Ariel are on the list of hostages to be released in the current first phase of the deal.
