A heartbroken father described his relief at hearing that his 8-year-old daughter had been killed in the Hamas attack on the Be’eri kibbutz in Israel after he’d spent days fearing she’d suffered a worse fate. Be’eri resident Thomas Hand told CNN that his young daughter, Emily, had gone to a friend’s house also in the kibbutz for a sleepover on Friday night. The Irishman managed to survive the rampage on Saturday—which claimed the lives of about 100 residents—but didn’t learn what had happened to Emily for another two days. “They just said: ‘We found Emily—she’s dead.’ And I went: ‘Yes!’” Hand said through tears. “That was the best possibility that I was hoping for. She was either dead or in Gaza. And if you know anything about what they do to people in Gaza, that is worse than death.” He said he feared his daughter would “be in a dark room, filled with Christ knows how many people, and terrified every minute, hour, day, and possible years to come. So death was a blessing. An absolute blessing.”
