Parents experience ’emotional shockwave’ after son’s release from Gaza

When Andrei Kozlov saw his mother after being rescued from eight months of captivity in Gaza, the Russian-Israeli fell to his knees as she hugged him.

“It was so emotional that we just couldn’t talk,” Kozlov’s mother, Yevgenia, told AFP of the day she was reunited with her son last week, in footage broadcast on television. Israeli and on social networks.

She feared “that Andrei would no longer be the same,” she said, adding that the meeting “was a storm of energy, an emotional shock wave coming from him.”

Andrey Kozlov, 27, was released on June 8 during an Israeli army operation in Nuseirat, a refugee camp in central Gaza, alongside Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, and Shlomi Ziv, 41 years old.

All four were kidnapped by Hamas militants on October 7 at the Nova electronic music festival, five kilometers east of the Gaza Strip, during the Palestinian Islamist movement’s unprecedented attack on southern Gaza. Israel.

Evgenia Kozlov and Andrey’s father, Mikhail, both 52, live in St. Petersburg, Russia, and boarded a plane the day after his release to see their son after eight months of waiting for news.

In an interview in Russian in Tel Aviv, they told AFP what their son experienced.

“He tells us some things. He says there are other things he will never tell,” his father said.

“One day one of his captors showed him that he would film him and kill him on camera to show the world. And he said it wouldn’t be now, but tomorrow, and he left (Andrey )… He must have thought about it all day,” Mikhail said.

His parents say Andrey told them he spent two months with his hands and feet tied, “and at first his hands were tied behind his back.”

– ‘Private’ –

Asked about Andrey’s state of mind five days after his return to Israel, where he had settled a year and a half before the attack, his parents said: “It is now difficult for him to make decisions, even the simplest ones, because he had been deprived of this opportunity for a long time.”

“He doesn’t know what to say when you give him the choice between rice and pasta,” his father said.

When he was released, Andrei, who had spent part of his captivity with the two other men rescued during the Israeli operation, was shocked to learn that there were 116 hostages remaining in Gaza, out of the 251 people taken force in Gaza on October 7.

Among the prisoners still in Gaza are 41 people whom the Israeli army believes to be dead.

Andrei “is one of those who can fully imagine the conditions endured” by the remaining hostages, Mikhail Kozlov said.

Like other families of released hostages, the Kozlovs want to fight for those still detained in Gaza.

“Our entire family is terribly worried about these people and we call on governments to quickly reach an agreement and help these people return to their families,” he said.

On Monday, the mother of former captive Almog Meir Jan told a news conference that “the remaining hostages need a deal to return home safely. A deal is on the table. We are calling on the Israeli government to move forward with this agreement.

Since a short-lived truce at the end of November, hopes of a ceasefire have been steadily dashed.

More than 100 hostages were released during the truce, including 80 Israelis in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons.

A total of seven hostages were freed in three different Israeli army operations.

The Hamas attack on October 7 left 1,194 dead in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in the Gaza Strip has left more than 37,232 dead, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry.

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