Israel assassinates terrorist who held British hostage captive
The Israeli military said that Muhammad Nasr Ali Quneita, who was one of thousands of fighters who invaded southern Israel on Oct 7, was killed in Gaza City as operations in the besieged strip continue and ceasefire talks stall.
'Quneita was a terrorist in Hamas's Al-Furqan Battalions' military intelligence, who infiltrated Israel during the brutal Oct 7 massacre and held Emily Damari hostage in his home at the start of the war,' the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said while sharing footage of the deadly strike.
Ms Damari, a British-Israeli who is now 28, was one of 251 people taken captive on the deadliest single day for the Jews since the Holocaust. She was shot and abducted after Hamas gunmen stormed her home in the Kfar Aza kibbutz.
The terrorists killed Ms Damari's dog and shot her in the hand before blindfolding her and driving her into Gaza where she was held captive for 471 days. She subsequently lost two fingers.
She was released in January as part of a short-lived ceasefire in which 10 Israeli hostages were released in exchange for 400 Palestinians held in Israeli jails, many on terror charges.
She and her fellow hostages were denied sufficient food, which was rationed between them, and she also spoke of never seeing the sun during her time in captivity.
Speaking to an Israeli broadcaster in May, she recalled a physical altercation with a Hamas captor who had pushed a fellow hostage.
'I started speaking in Hebrew, not Arabic – 'What are you doing?' – and pushed him back,' she told Channel 12. 'He grabbed me by the arm, and I pushed his arm away, until others separated us.
'Would I have gotten a bullet? Fine, then I'll die and won't be in captivity, thank you very much,' she said. 'Sucks for my family, for my friends, but I'll be out of this nightmare.'
Ms Damari, who is gay, had to hide her sexuality from her captors during her time in Gaza, knowing that it could be fatal if the Islamist terror group found out. Homosexuality is illegal in Gaza, punishable by prison or even death.
'They can't know something like that, they consider it sick,' Ms Damari said. 'We once asked one of them, 'What if your brother were gay'? he said: 'I'd murder him'.'
She told the news channel that during her long captivity she had quizzed her captors on topics from how they built the tunnel to how much they cost to build, the terrorist nicknaming her 'Fuduli,' meaning curious in Arabic.
Ms Damari was from one of the worst hit communities on the Gaza border, the rural community of Kfar Aza.
In a phone call with Sir Keir Starmer after her release, she claimed she had been held in facilities belonging to the UN refugee agency UNRWA during her captivity. She said she'd been denied medical treatment during her time as a hostage.
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