Believed dead, then alive in Gaza - father of child hostage clings to hope
Tom Hand has gone from hoping his daughter Emily had died quickly after she went missing during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas gunmen in southern Israel to agonized thoughts of her spending her ninth birthday as a hostage in a tunnel in Gaza. Emily had been on a sleepover at a friend's house in Be'eri, one of a ring of kibbutzes around the Gaza Strip targeted by Hamas in an attack that began in early morning and ended hours later with 1,400 people killed and about 240 taken hostage by Israel's count