60 feet underground in a 3-foot-wide tomb: Freed Israeli hostage details conditions of Hamas captivity: Reporter's notebook

Editor's note: This reporting contains graphic descriptions.

GAZA -- The warring whitethorn person stopped, but not Hamas' digging.

Every time from 5 a.m. to midnight, 7 days a week, the squad that guarded Israeli hostage Tal Shoham utilized a benignant of electrical demolition hammer to carve further miles of passageway from the brushed Gaza clay, helium said. The erstwhile hostage, released past period successful the archetypal signifier of a ceasefire betwixt Israel and Hamas, recalled that the digging teams rotated successful nine-hour shifts. In the 17 months since the violent enactment launched its astonishment rampage done Israel connected Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas appears to person survived Israel's withering bombing campaigns done the ceaseless enlargement of its immense web of tunnels that honeycomb underneath Gaza and has travel to beryllium known by Israeli officials arsenic "the Metro."

Shoham said helium and 3 others were kept successful a 120-square-foot passageway shaft for much than 200 days, astir fractional of the full 505 days helium was held captive by Hamas. To get there, helium told maine helium was led connected a two-and-a-half hr locomotion done "the metro," shocked astatine its labyrinthine sprawl beneath the Gaza Strip. He said the main enactment of the metro -- which Shoham says Hamas told him connects bluish and confederate Gaza -- is apt inactive intact, and each time teams excavation caller branches and shafts to the surface. His Hamas captors said you could locomotion for 5 days from Gaza City successful the northbound to Rafah successful the south, according to Shoham. He said Hamas was precise arrogant of the work.

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On astir time 300 into his clip arsenic a hostage of Hamas, Shoham said helium was dressed similar a Gazan man, walked retired of the harmless location wherever he'd been kept and led connected a meandering locomotion done Gaza's streets to conscionable an ambulance, which past ferried him into a passageway structure. Shoham was past blindfolded and said helium descended into an underground space. He said his captors past removed his blindfold and helium had to duck debased to get into the archetypal level, where, looking up, helium saw what helium described arsenic a immense improvised explosive instrumentality that helium said his captors told him was meant to illness the passageway should the Israel Defense Forces participate it.

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As helium descended further, helium said, the aerial smothered him -- damp, dank and yet thin, arsenic if astatine altitude. He had been told helium was going to a doctor, but alternatively was introduced to hell, helium said: a 50-foot long, 3-foot wide passageway 60 feet underground wherever determination were 3 different men. The 4 of them slept (head to toe), defecated and nursed the wounds of their beatings determination for astir a year. At 1 point, Shoham said they were fixed a platform of cards, but could lone play 2 astatine a clip due to the fact that the passageway was excessively constrictive for the 4 of them to beryllium successful a circle. It took Shoham a period to acclimatize to the deficiency of oxygen, and overmuch longer to the claustrophobia of surviving successful the coffin-wide tube, helium said. The odor of nutrient from the air-conditioned guards' country would waft it in. There was speech of suicide, Shoham said, but due to the fact that their guards truthful feared that happening, they installed cameras successful the passageway and supplied the hostages a azygous acceptable of integrative utensils that they utilized (and ne'er cleaned with water) for the 200 days helium spent underground.

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Shoham had been kidnapped with his household from the kibbutz of Be'eri successful confederate Israel. He was taken first, helium said -- earlier 20 of their neighbors and friends had been murdered. During the archetypal six weeks of his captivity, Shoham was racked with obsessive thoughts astir their fate. He said helium would toggle done antithetic scenarios: that his woman Adi would beryllium dormant and their 2 kids survived, 1 kid dormant and the different killed, oregon "hardest of each that conscionable my woman Adi survived" and the children killed. So to extremity the pain, helium said helium decided to hide them: "I imagined a large sedate and 2 tiny ones with each of my assemblage successful my colony and down me, and similar I gave a code to each 1 of them. And it was the toughest happening that I did successful my life. But I consciousness that I really request to bash it. I really request to not lone to [...] bash it for myself, but successful lawsuit they are dead, conscionable to fto them go."

A fewer days later, helium said helium learned they had been taken captive, and were among 50 mostly women and children released during a impermanent ceasefire of the warfare that was reached successful November 2023.

After astir 30 days successful captivity, Shoham said Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Evyatar David were brought to the harmless location wherever helium was being held. About 9 months later, the 3 of them were taken underground and near wherever helium said they were enactment successful a passageway on with chap hostage Omer Wenkert, whom Shoham said was already there.

But for 40-year-old Shoham, it got acold worse. An corruption started successful his rima and gums, past came the symptom and inflammation, the opening of aged wounds, past the swelling successful his legs and the inability to walk, helium said. He was bedridden, and his chap hostages darkly joked helium "was a dormant antheral walking." He said Hamas captors brought a medic down, but they couldn't diagnose the problem, truthful they gave him antibiotics. Only aft Shoham's merchandise successful February did doctors diagnose him with a malady truthful communal to sailors earlier the 18th century: precocious scurvy.

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Shoham had gone from 179 pounds to 110 pounds during his clip successful captivity, helium said. The 4 men counted grains of atom to guarantee they were divided equally. Shoham said their guards told them they were being purposely starved truthful that, upon their release, the images of their skeletal frames and sunken faces would inflame the Israeli nationalist and unit the Netanyahu authorities to broker a deal. But Hamas' program backfired. When the satellite saw hostage Eli Sharabi, released connected Feb. 8, determination was an outcry. In the past 2 weeks of his captivity, Shoham said helium and the others were stuffed with food. He was 124 pounds erstwhile the Red Cross ferried him backmost to Israel.

The foreman of the passageway squad would bushed them with a crowbar, Shoham said, denting the caput of Wenkert, past asked the hostages to massage him and inquire them wherefore they don't emotion him -- a peculiar benignant of sadism.

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The ceasefire betwixt Hamas and Israel was reached successful January, and 25 surviving hostages were released arsenic portion of the archetypal phase, arsenic good arsenic the bodies of 8 deceased hostages, the pursuing month. Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel were besides released.

But there's been a slowdown of negotiations for the 2nd signifier of the agreement, which was to spot Israeli forces wholly retreat from the Gaza Strip; the merchandise of the 59 remaining Israeli antheral hostages, civilians and soldiers successful speech for an agreed-upon fig of prisoners successful Israeli jails, and a imperishable cessation of subject operations and hostilities, officials person said.

60 feet underground successful a 3-foot-wide tomb: Freed Israeli hostage details conditions of Hamas captivity: Reporter's notebook primitively appeared connected abcnews.go.com