Numbers show the scale of a deadly year in Middle East

As calls for a ceasefire in Gaza go unheeded, and the conflict spreads, figures highlight the toll war is taking in the region.

- ALICJA HAGOPIAN, HOLLY EVANS

On 7 October last year, Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages in the Gaza Strip.

At least 100 hostages remain inside Gaza, although a significant number are thought to already be dead. The attacks led Israel to unleash an unprecedented assault on Gaza, where the death toll has now surpassed 41,000, according to Palestinian authorities.

Many families of the hostages, worried their loved ones are also under bombardment, have spent a year campaigning for a truce deal to secure their relatives’ release. The Independent spoke to Israelis whose lives were irrevocably changed by that day.

‘Keith is still in those tunnels, with no oxygen, no bathroom, no way to wash’

Aviva Siegel, 63, was kidnapped by Hamas alongside her husband Keith, 65, from Kafr Azar, near the Gaza border. She was held in Gaza for 51 days before being released in the November hostage exchange deal. Keith, who is from North Carolina, remains captive.

Aviva Siegel knows exactly what her husband, an AmericanIsraeli hostage in Gaza, is going through – because she endured 51 days of captivity in Hamas’s tunnels herself. The grandmother of five describes the suffocating conditions underground, not being able to speak or move.

“There wasn’t enough oxygen to keep yourself alive. You had to keep quiet for 24 hours a day. You could barely eat, drink, move, talk, or even breathe.” She says their captors “did not even look at us as humans”.