Emily Hand turned nine on Friday. Like many little girls around the world, she loves singing and dancing like Beyoncé.
But unlike those other girls, Emily “spent her birthday in the Gaza tunnels,” one of the dozens of hostages kidnapped by Hamas during its deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to her father, Thomas Hand.
“She didn’t even know it was her birthday.” “She doesn’t know what day it is and what date it is,” Irish-born Hand told AFP on Sunday, making a heartbreaking appeal to the United Kingdom , to bring Emily home.
According to initial information, the 63-year-old assumed that his daughter was dead.
“But that was a mix-up,” he said on the sidelines of a protest demanding the release of the more than 200 people held by the Palestinian Islamist group.
The DNA tests did not match, he added.
Watch Mr Hand speak to Downing Street on Sunday:
“Later we had an eyewitness … who saw her being taken by the terrorists in a van to Gaza,” Mr Hand said after the attack on the Beeri kibbutz.
For the father, who moved to Israel at the age of 32, Beeri was an idyllic place. “Seriously, it was paradise on earth…until it all came crashing down on that ‘terrible day.’
According to Israeli officials, some of the worst atrocities occurred at the Beeri kibbutz when Gaza-based Hamas militants stormed the militarized border, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages.