Hostage executed in Gaza hospital bed after being shot three times in head, sister reveals

A Hamas hostage was dragged into Gaza and executed in a hospital bed, shot three times in the head, his body later hidden inside a tunnel wall, his sister has disclosed.

Avivit Yablonka Abady said her brother, Hanan Yablonka, 42, was shot by Hamas militants before being taken into Gaza on 7 October 2023. He was then killed in a hospital, his remains concealed in the wall of a tunnel beneath the enclave.

“Hamas executed an Israeli hostage in a Gaza hospital bed, while another hostage recounts her 55-day captivity after being shot at the Nova festival.”

The revelation comes as another former hostage, Mia Schem, has described her own abduction at the Nova music festival, three miles from the Israel-Gaza border. The 21-year-old French-Israeli citizen was shot in the arm by a Hamas militant and held for 55 days before being released during a temporary truce.

“I remember that I asked Elia, ‘Do you want to go to the Nova Festival?’ and he tell me ‘Yes, why not?’” Schem told The Independent in London, recalling the decision to attend the rave on a whim. She drove to the home of her best friend, Elia Toledano, and they took his car to the site, which had been kept secret by organisers until hours before.

Once rockets began at 6:29am, Schem and Toledano headed for his car, believing they were among the first to leave. Those who turned right from the site were saved, Schem said, while those who turned left towards Tel Aviv and Jerusalem encountered Hamas gunmen.

“Me and Elia were the first people to see the terrorists,” she said, describing as many as 40 gunmen on the road, shooting at cars. She floored the accelerator but the car was riddled with bullets, rolled twice, and they had to escape through windows. Toledano called emergency services, but the reply was: “You need to hide. We can’t help you.”

While hiding on the ground, Schem was shot in the arm. At that point, 378 people from the festival were already dead. In the early days of the war, Hamas released a video of Schem in captivity, the first footage of any of the 251 hostages.

Yablonka’s fate, meanwhile, highlights the brutality faced by those taken alive. His sister’s account, published in the Daily Mail, details how he was executed in a hospital bed – shot three times in the head – and his body hidden inside a Gaza tunnel wall. No further information has been released about the hospital or those involved in the killing.