The Israeli military said Tuesday that it had recovered the body of Eden Zakaria, a 27-year-old hostage who is believed to have been captured as she tried to escape the Oct. 7 massacre at the Supernova desert rave with her boyfriend and friends.
Authorities did not say whether Zakaria died on Oct. 7 or while in captivity.
The announcement comes approximately a month after her loved ones spoke out about Zakaria’s final moments of freedom, with them recalling her frantically yelling into a phone, “they’re shooting at us, they’re really close,” The Times of Israel reported.
ADVERTISEMENT
Zakaria’s loved ones said she was able to make it into a car to flee the slaughter at the festival—where Israeli officials claim 360 people were killed by Hamas—but her car was fired on. Her boyfriend, Ofek Kimchi, died in the car before they could escape.
“She said they were on their way home,” said Zakaria’s mother, Orin Ganz-Zach, in a widely publicized video last month.
In that same clip, Ganz-Zach said she believed her daughter was still alive in captivity and that she was “being taken care of.”
“I want to believe that there are good people there in Gaza,” she said then.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which has helped to coordinate relatives’ outreach efforts, said that Zakaria “was kidnapped while injured in the upper half of her body.”
The Israeli military confirmed Tuesday it had also recovered the body of the soldier Ziv Dado. It was already know that Dado was killed on Oct. 7, but Israel considers those still held by Hamas to be hostages regardless of whether they are dead or alive.
Over the weekend, Israeli officials announced that the hostage Sahar Baruch died during a failed rescue attempt. In recovering Zakaria and Dado’s bodies, it said that two of its soldiers were killed in action.
Israel said this week it believes over 100 hostages remain in Hamas captivity as it continues its barrage of airstrikes on the smoldering Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 17,000 people, Palestinian authorities say.
The Israel military said last week that it had launched a new phase of its war, commencing a new offensive in the south of Gaza after devastating much of the strip’s north—an assault the United Nations announced Tuesday has left approximately a fifth of Gaza’s buildings destroyed or damaged.
The humanitarian situation remains desperate for hundreds of thousands of Gazans who are displaced and unable to access aid, with the the local medical system been pushed to the brink with resources dwindling as the number of patients requiring care has spiked.
Under a one-week ceasefire that ended on the first of the month, Hamas released 105 hostages from Gaza in exchange for 240 Palestinians jailed by Israel. It remained unclear Tuesday if there are immediate plans for a future ceasefire to exchange more hostages.
