“My dog ​​supported me morally.” A former Israeli hostage reveals the conditions of her detention by Hamas in Gaza

Mia Leimberg, a teenager who was released at the end of November as part of the truce agreement between Israel and Hamas, spoke on Wednesday about the “moral support” provided by her dog, Bella, who kept her occupied “during her captivity.”

“She helped me a lot and kept me busy. She was like moral support for me,” 17-year-old Mia said in an interview with the Public Broadcasting Corporation.

The girl was released with her mother, Gabriela Leimberg (59 years old), and their relative Clara Marman (62 years old) on November 28.

Pictures of her release spread all over the world, carrying her little white dog and surrounded by two masked fighters, one from Hamas and the other from Islamic Jihad, when she was handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The teenager who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak recounted, “We would give her the leftovers of our food, and she would try to wander around all the places where we were detained.”

After being detained for seven weeks, Mia today feels “not well.” “I don’t feel like I’m in shock. I don’t feel like I can’t sleep, but it was a difficult experience,” she said.

A war broke out between Israel and Hamas on October 7 after an attack launched by the movement inside southern Israel, which led to the killing of about 1,200 people, most of whom were civilians, the majority of whom died on the first day of the attack, according to the Israeli authorities.

The Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip has killed 16,248 people since the start of the war, more than 70% of whom are women and children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

A temporary truce that lasted for seven days between November 24 and December 1 allowed the exchange of dozens of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel, and the entry of humanitarian aid trucks from Egypt into the devastated Strip.

Additional sources • AFP