The hospital report prepared shortly after her release said that she returned to Israel with fractures in her right eye socket, cheek, knee and nose and severe bruising on her knee and back. The report stated that several injuries were related to her abduction on Oct. 7, including punches to her right eye.

After reaching the edge of Gaza, Ms. Soussana said, she was shoved into a waiting car and driven a few hundred yards into the outskirts of Gaza City. She was untied, dressed in a paramilitary uniform and transferred to another car filled with uniformed militants. A hood was placed over her head, though she could still catch glimpses of her surroundings from under it, she said. After a short drive, she was hurried up a staircase and onto a rooftop, she said. Image Charred cars and a battered gate. The gate at Kfar Azza through which the attackers entered. Gaza can be seen in the background.Credit…Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

After the hood was removed, Ms. Soussana said, she found herself in a small structure built on the roof of what she would later realize was an upscale private home. She remembered that militants were busy taking more guns from a box. Then the gunmen hurried downstairs, and she was left alone, facing a wall, with a man who said he was the owner of the house and called himself Mahmoud, she recalled.

“After a couple of minutes, he said I can turn around,” Ms. Soussana said. “And I was shocked,” she added. “I find myself sitting in a house in Gaza.”

She said Mahmoud was soon joined by a younger man, Muhammad. She remembered Muhammad as a chubby, balding man of average height with a wide nose.

Later that day, they dressed her in a thick brown garment that covered her body, she said. They gave her three pills, which they said were painkillers. It was the only time that she remembers receiving any kind of medicine in Gaza, let alone medical treatment. Israel-Hamas War: Live Updates Updated March 26, 2024, 1:13 p.m. ET3 hours ago 3 hours ago

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Fitted with a fan and a television, the room appeared to have been prepared for her arrival, she said. There were three mattresses, she said, one for her and two for the guards.

Early in her captivity, her guards chained her ankle to the window frame, she said. Around Oct. 11, she said, she was led by the chain to a bedroom downstairs. She understood that it belonged to one of Mahmoud’s sons, and that his family had been moved to another place.

The chain was reattached to the door handle, she said, next to a mirror. For the first time since her capture, she could see what she looked like.

“I saw the chains and I saw that my face was all swollen and blue,” she said.

“And I just started to cry,” she said. “This was one of the lowest moments of my life.” The Jail

For the next two and a half weeks in October, Ms. Soussana said, she was guarded exclusively by Muhammad.

She recalled that the room was almost permanently shrouded in darkness. The curtain was usually drawn shut and there were rolling power outages for most of the day, she said.

She said Muhammad slept outside the bedroom, in the adjacent living room, but frequently entered the bedroom in his underwear, asking about her sex life and offering to massage her body.

When he took her to the bathroom, Ms. Soussana said, he refused to let her shut the door. After giving her sanitary pads, Muhammad seemed particularly interested in the timing of her period, she said. She said she had spoken in a mix of basic English and Arabic; she had learned a little Arabic at school and her mother’s family — Jews from Iraq — had sometimes spoken it during her childhood.

“Every day, he would ask: ‘Did you get your period? Did you get your period? When you get your period, when it will be over, you will wash, you will take a shower and you will wash your clothes,’” Ms. Soussana recalled.

When it arrived, Ms. Soussana said, she was exhausted, afraid and undernourished; her period lasted just one day. She managed to convince him that her menstruation continued for nearly a week, she said.

She tried to humanize herself in his eyes by asking the meaning of Arabic words she heard on television. She also promised that her family would reward him financially if she was returned without further harm to Israel, she said.

In the afternoons, two associates of Muhammad would join him at the apartment, bringing him a cooked meal, she said. Some of this food was given to her as her one meal of the day.

The Israeli strikes on the neighborhood became more frequent and frightening, Ms. Soussana said, noting that some shattered the windows. As the bombing intensified, she said, she started feeling sorry for the civilians, wondering why Hamas had never built bomb shelters for its people.

“I felt for them,” Ms. Soussana said. “Just think about growing up like this — it’s scary.” The Assault

Early on the morning of the assault, she said, Muhammad insisted she take a shower, but she refused, saying the water was cold. Undeterred, he unchained Ms. Soussana and brought her to the kitchen and showed her a pot of water boiling on the stove, she said.

Minutes later, he brought her to the bathroom and gave her the heated water to pour over herself, she said.

After washing for a few minutes, she heard his voice again from the door, she said.

“‘Quickly, Amit, quickly,’” she recalled him saying.

“I turned around and I saw him standing there,” she said. “With the gun.”

She remembered reaching for a hand towel to cover herself as he advanced and hit her.

“He said, ‘Amit, Amit, take it off,’” she recalled. “Finally, I took it off.”

“He sat me on the edge of the bath. And I closed my legs. And I resisted. And he kept punching me and put his gun in my face,” Ms. Soussana said. “Then he dragged me to the bedroom.”

At that point, Muhammad forced her to commit a sexual act on him, Ms. Soussana said. After the assault, Muhammad left the room to wash, leaving Ms. Soussana sitting naked in the dark, she said.

When he returned, she recalled him showing remorse, saying, “I’m bad, I’m bad, please don’t tell Israel.”

That day, Muhammad repeatedly returned to offer her food, Ms. Soussana said. Sobbing on the bed, she turned down the initial offerings, she said.

Knowing that Ms. Soussana craved sunlight, she said, he refused to open the curtains, leaving the room in darkness. Desperate for daylight, she accepted the food, believing that she had no other option but to placate her abuser.

“You can’t stand looking at him — but you have to: He’s the one who’s protecting you, he’s your guard,” she said. “You’re there with him and you know that every moment it can happen again. You’re completely dependent on him.” The Israelis

Ms. Soussana said her captors moved her away from the border after a major, hourslong bombardment overnight. Based on the extent of the explosions and snippets she caught on television, she later concluded it was around the start of Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza on Friday, Oct. 27. Image Smoke rising from battered buildings in the distance. Northern Gaza after an Israeli airstrike, as seen from Sderot, Israel, on Oct. 29.Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

On the following day, she was hurried into a small white car, she said. The driver headed southwest toward what she would later be told was the central city of Nuseirat.

“Muhammad is sitting in the back seat next to me, and with the gun pointed at me,” she said.

The car stopped outside what looked like a United Nations school and Ms. Soussana was ushered into a busy street, she recalled.

She said she was handed over to a man who called himself Amir. He marched her up the stairs of a nearby apartment block and into another private home, she said.

For the first time in weeks, she was free of Muhammad — but terrified to be entering yet another unknown. “‘Oh my God,’” she remembered wondering. “‘What’s going to happen to me?’”

The man ushered her into a bedroom and shut the door behind her, she recalled. Inside, she found two young women playing cards, next to an older man lying on a bed and an older woman sitting in a chair, she said. Ms. Soussana was wearing traditional clothes from Gaza, she recalled.

“They looked at me and I looked at them, for like half a minute,” she said. “Then I asked, ‘Are you Israelis?’”

“Are you Israeli?” Ms. Soussana remembered one of the women replying. The Tunnels

Three weeks after her kidnapping, Ms. Soussana had been united with four other hostages. Hugging them, Ms. Soussana broke down in tears, she said.

The identities of the four others were shared with The Times on the condition that their names would not be used to protect those still in captivity.

A few days after her arrival, she was summoned to the apartment’s living room, Ms. Soussana recalled. Amir often played here with his children.

On that day, the guards wrapped her head in a pink shirt, forced her to sit on the floor, handcuffed her, and began beating her with the butt of a gun, she said.

After several minutes, they used duct tape to cover her mouth and nose, tied her feet, and placed the handcuffs on the base of her palms, she said. Then she was suspended, hanging “like a chicken” from a stick stretching between two couches, causing her such pain that she felt that her hands would soon be dislocated.

They carried on beating and kicking her, focusing on the soles of her feet, while simultaneously demanding information they believed she was hiding from them, Ms. Soussana said.

She still doesn’t understand what exactly they wanted or why they thought she was concealing something, she said. At one point, the head guard brought over a spike, and made as if to poke her eye with it, pul