Noa Argamani, an Israeli woman who was abducted by Hamas on October 7, has dismissed reports suggesting she was beaten and her hair was cut in captivity. She also added that she was injured in a wall collapse incident caused by an Israeli airstrike.
Earlier this week, Ms Argamani narrated her ordeal during a meeting with diplomats from Israel and G7 countries in Tokyo. However, she later clarified that her words were taken out of context.
“I cannot ignore what the Israeli media has done to me over the past 24 hours, taking my words out of context,” she wrote in her Instagram stories.
“Al Qassam Brigades’ members did not hit me while I was in captivity, nor did they cut my hair; I was injured by the collapse of a wall caused by an Israeli airstrike,” she added.
Ms Argamani underlined that “no one hit me during captivity, but I was injured all over my body after the airstrike.”
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The 26-year-old was among the hundreds of people kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova music festival during the October 7 attacks.
She was freed by the Israeli special forces in a raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza on June 8. Besides her, three others — Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41 — were freed, AFP reported.
On a visit to Japan with her father, Ms Argamani recalled the time she was held captive by the Hamas militants. “Every night I was falling asleep and thinking, this may be the last night of my life,” she said.
Till the time she was rescued by the Israeli authorities, Ms Argamani “just did not believe that I’m still surviving”.
“It’s a miracle because I survived October 7, and I survived this bombing, and I also survived the rescue,” AFP quoted her as saying.
Earlier, a video showing Ms Argamani on the back of a motorcycle screaming, “Don’t kill me”, went viral. The video also showed her boyfriend — Avinatan Or, an engineer — being taken away separately. However, she has clarified that she had no idea about it until she was freed.
“Avinatan, my boyfriend, is still there, and we need to bring them back before it’s going to be too late,” she said.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said it had retrieved the bodies of six hostages from various tunnels in the southern region of Gaza.
Around 251 people were taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 last year. Of these, 105, including 34 dead, are still inside Gaza, according to the Israeli army.
Nearly 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, were killed in the October 7 attack. Over the last ten months, Israel has continuously bombed Gaza, killing over 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
In Gaza, the Israeli airstrikes have flattened townships, neighbourhoods, hospitals and schools, internally displacing a vast majority of the narrow strip’s 2.1 million people.
