Return to the kibbutz 'This was Mum's little heaven ... Her absence is loud'

It's a ghost town," said Noam Sagi as he returned to Nir Oz kibbutz for the first time since his mother, Ada, 75, was abducted by Hamas gunmen.

- Emine Sinmaz

He had arrived from London to campaign for the release of the 240 hostages snatched from their homes on 7 October. He also wanted to make sense of what happened to Ada, who last texted her family at 9.24am on what is known in Israel as Black Saturday.

Sagi, 53, was trying to piece together the horrifying clues he has uncovered in her home, bloodied, pockmarked with bullet holes and littered with spent casings.

"This was Mum's little heaven," he said, outside a lush patio now blemished by blood. "I expect Mum to come with a hug and apple cake and coffee and loads of kisses. But what you see is just devastation and she's not here. Her absence is really, really loud. The birds continue, it's still green, but there is a void."

Inside, he stepped over shattered glass and broken furniture. A trail of blood leads from the safe room to the front door. "When I see the bloodstains and the signs of struggle it brings the story alive in my head. I see her, I feel her pain, I feel her terror," he said.

Ada, a retired Arabic teacher, had lived at the house for 54 years.

It was looted after her abduction and Sagi, his wife, Michal Sagi, 53, and brother-in-law Sharon Sela, 47, were trying to find her treasured possessions among the chaos.

He entered a bedroom where Ada's six grandchildren often stay. "This is not just blood," Sagi said, pointing to thicker drops underneath a picture of a bird that his son painted. In another bedroom, a drawing by Ada's youngest grandchild had two bullet holes in it.

At the safe room - the scene of Ada's abduction - was a pool of blood by the entrance and smears on the door handle.