IN HOSTAGE SQUARE

Passover vigil for missing 130 | Mass grave in Gaza hospital

- CHRIS HUGHES

DEVASTATED Israeli families flocked to hostage memorial centres yesterday in the countdown to the annual Passover week.

A shadow has been cast over the joyous festival to mark Jewish freedom from slavery.

Of 250 hostages taken to the Gaza Strip after the Hamas raids on October 7, 130 are still missing.

A poignant gathering in Tel Aviv's Museum Plaza - renamed Hostage Square - came as officials in the Strip uncovered a mass grave of nearly 300 people in the grounds of a hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.

The burial area in the hospital was built when Israeli forces laid siege to the facility last month.

In Hostage Square, four-year-old Zeev pointed at an image of a seized mum holding her child and told her father Roet, 30: "Daddy - I knew there were adults but it says there are babies as well. I want them all to come home. I want this mummy and her baby home."