‘I can finally breathe,’ says friend and comrade of Edan Alexander

By AP and ToI Staff 12 May 2025, 9:09 pm

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“I feel like I can finally breathe,” says Agam Shalam, who went to high school and trained for the IDF in a unit with Edan Alexander, the hostage who was freed this evening from captivity.

She recalls being on a kibbutz in southern Israel when the Hamas terror group attacked on October 7, 2023, hiding in bomb shelters and, after a couple of days, hearing that a military officer had contacted Alexander’s parents to say that he had been taken hostage.

She called it “an insane thing to hear, for the first time. I don’t think anyone ever, I never expected for my friend to be held hostage, not for a day, not for a week, and certainly not for 580 days.”