Ynet photographer missing, feared kidnapped along with 3-year-old daughter

A Kfar Aza-based journalist whose wife was murdered is missing and feared taken hostage along with his 3-year-old daughter, the man’s sister says.

“We’re waiting for any fragment of information about them,” the sister, Dafna, says in an interview in Ynet, where her missing brother, Roee Idan, works as a photographer.

Neighbors of Roee Idan and his late wife, Smadar, told the family that the child, Avigail, was seen after the incident with blood on her clothes. The blood came from a gunshot wound her father sustained, Dafna says.

Roee Idan documented Saturday terrorists crossing into his kibbutz on paragliders, his sister says, as Hamas gunmen stormed Israeli communities.

He rushed back to his home, on the western edge of Kfar Aza, only to find that terrorists had killed his wife, Smadar, in the couple’s living room, Ynet reports. Their two eldest children, 9-year-old Michal and 6-year-old Amalia, hid in a closet until the terrorists left, the report says. They are being cared for by relatives.

Idan was carrying his younger daughter Avigail when he was shot outside of their home. The small girl found shelter at the home of neighbors, but they were abducted, and she is thought to have been taken along with them, Dafna says, based on testimonies of other neighbors.

The whereabouts of Roee Idan remain unknown following multiple searches for him by locals and authorities across Kfar Aza’s territory and nearby roads.

“We are experiencing a nightmare. And we’re praying,” his sister, Dafna, tells Ynet.