A former Hamas hostage has opened up about the cruelty ‘deliberately’ inflicted on her by Palestinian doctors who reattached her ankle at a 90-degree angle after she was shot by terrorists.
Maya Regev, who was 21 when she was kidnapped on October 7, 2023, also revealed how medics in Gaza needlessly sliced open her skin before pouring alcohol, chlorine and vinegar over her wounds while watching her helplessly scream in pain.
Just days earlier, Maya had been enjoying ‘the best four hours of my life’ after joining fellow trance revellers at the Nova Festival, alongside her younger brother Itay, 18, and their close friend Omer Shem Tov, 20.
All three would later fall into the hands of Hamas terrorists, who ruthlessly shot them at close range before hauling them onto a truck across the Gaza border.
Maya and Itay were later released in November 2023 during the first ceasefire negotiations, having spent 50 days under the control of their brutal captors.
But Omer, who went on to be held in isolation and kept largely in darkness, was only finally released after 505 days.
Maya, from Herzliya, central Israel, is one of several survivors appearing at an immersive exhibition in London – running until July 15 – showing the atrocities that took place at the Nova Festival on October 7.
Some 413 people were killed and 44 taken hostage to Gaza from the annual outdoor trance festival in southern Israel, with terrorists inflicting similar barbarities in nearby Kibbutzim, including Be’eri, Kfar Aza and Nir Oz.
Former Hamas hostage Maya Regev has opened up about the cruelty inflicted by Palestinian doctors who ‘deliberately’ reattached her gunshot ankle at a 90-degree angle
Maya was kidnapped alongside her brother Itay on Octover 7, 2023 at the Nova Festival
Maya, seen on crutches, walks with her father Itay days after her release in December 2023
A report published last month by The Civil Commission, an independent Israeli women’s rights NGO formed in the wake of October 7, 2023, also detailed how several men and women were sexually abused, raped and mutilated.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Maya, now 24, detailed how the atmosphere at Nova turned within mere moments from ‘celebration’ to ‘shock, panic and running for our lives’.
At 6.29am, the music suddenly turned off amid the sounds of missiles overhead and gunfire in the near distance.
Thousands of festivalgoers began running through the nearby fields, heading to cars and trucks to make their escape from the impending Hamas terrorists who were flooding into Israel from the border with Gaza.
Maya, Itay and Omer ran for more than two hours desperately trying to find a place of safety.
‘I remember running and the people next to me were just falling because they had been hit. I couldn’t even stop to help them, because if I did so I might be next. So I had to keep running, the bullets whistling past me all the time.
‘I saw many bodies, a lot of blood, a lot of people just terrified for their lives. I saw things no young woman should have to see.’
At one point, their friend Ori Danino, 25, phoned them to ask where they were. Ori had managed to get to his car and was driving away from the scene, but decided to do a U-turn to save his friends.
It was a decision that ultimately cost him his life – Ori found the group and helped them into his car, but he was subsequently kidnapped with the others to Gaza.
Ori was one of six hostages later found murdered in a tunnel, with IDF soldiers recovering his body in September 2024.
Maya recalled how after being picked up by Ori they believed they might yet evade the Hamas terrorists – and she called her father, Ilan, to tell him what was happening.
She said: ‘But the minute he answered the phone was the minute we saw this pickup truck filled with terrorists.
‘Nine of them just came off of it and started shooting like crazy while I was on the phone with my father.
‘He heard everything. He heard Arabic. He heard me screaming that I was shot, that I loved him. I was basically saying goodbye.
‘Dad asked me to try to hide, but I told him: “We’re in a car, we can’t escape, I love you.”
‘The terrorist opened the door and dragged me out of the car. I remember screaming “Abba” [father] as they pulled me onto the ground. And this is how the call ended.’
Maya was seen being escorted to a Red Cross vehicle flanked by Hamas terrorists on November 26, 2023
Emotional footage shows Maya being surrounded by her parents and younger brother after she was released and taken to a hospital in Israel. She would need to be admitted for a year after contracting serious infections in her leg
A disturbing recording of the last phone call Maya made to her father, believing she would die imminently, was played by her tearful parents to the media in the aftermath of her being kidnapped.
Even now, close to three years since her ordeal began, Maya has to close her eyes every time she hears the ‘chilling’ recording again.
Now in the hands of Hamas terrorists, Maya said she was forced to sit between two armed men in the rear of their vehicle, with two more in the front. On the outside of the truck, Itay and Omer were forced to lie down in the truck at gunpoint, surrounded by another five men.
As they crossed the border into Gaza, Maya knew she had been taken hostage – and began suffering the searing pain from her horrific gunshot wounds.
She explained: ‘On my right leg, it didn’t hit the bone luckily, the bullet just took a little muscle from the calves.
‘On my left leg, it hit the bone and crushed six centimeters or almost three inches.
‘My foot was basically hanging on strings of flesh, and I had to hold it so it wouldn’t disconnect.
‘This is how I was for eight days. The bullet inside my leg with a very open wound and a lot of infection, untreated.’
Maya described how Itay and Omer were taken into an apartment while she was placed in another on a different floor in the same building.
Given her distress, she asked her captors if she could send a message to her brother and they agreed. For a short while the siblings were able to pass notes back and forth between one another, giving each other the strength to get through their traumatic situation.
‘I still have the notes – I hid them in my clothes,’ said Maya. ‘It was just things like “be strong, eat whatever you have, don’t worry, soon we’ll be home”.
‘We didn’t say how miserable we are. We always said, think good and it will be good.
‘We were just cheering each other up because this is the only thing we had. I always say if I would cry myself to sleep every night, I would probably not survive.
‘You have to be strong mentally so you can survive physically.’
As the days wore on, Maya became unable to stand or walk and had to be carried from one place to another. After eight days, her kidnappers agreed to take her to Al-Shifa hospital, in northern Gaza City.
She recalled: ‘That’s where they took the bullet out and connected my foot, but they connected it almost 90 degrees to the left and my leg was a lot shorter.
‘I remember looking at it and tried to move my toes – and they moved.’
She spent more than 40 days afterwards lying in the hospital bed until the day she was released.
During this time, Maya said she was subjected to nothing less than torture at the hands of the doctors and medical staff tasked with looking after her.
‘There was one time they put an external fixation on my leg and the doctor just came in the room and grabbed me by it. He tilted my leg up in the air and began yelling at me.
‘People ask if he did it on purpose – so I want to say of course it was on purpose. He didn’t have to do it. He didn’t need to do it.
‘There was another time they poured alcohol into my wounds and cut my skin when they didn’t need to do it. I still have the scars of where they cut my skin.
‘And I remember sitting there not being able to do anything because there’s only one of me and there are so many of them – and they have guns and knives.
‘If I would yell at them or kick them, they would have just killed me.’
She detailed how while at the hospital, an armed terrorist stood in one corner of the room with others outside in the corridor, while an Arab woman sat close to her by her bedside.
‘This woman, who was a teacher, was with me 24/7, and there was one terrorist that would always go in and out of the room. Once a day, he would come with a plastic bag with a little rice and sometimes a very tiny piece of chicken.
‘They would sit with me and we had to share the food. Even though they had anything they wanted to eat, she would take my food.
‘Sometimes they placed food on a table in the room but I couldn’t move and I couldn’t reach it. The woman was the one who decided whether I would get to eat or not.’
At times her kidnappers would also taunt her about being released – telling her ‘nobody wants you, you’re going to die here’.
Then on November 25, 2023, the terrorist came into her room and ‘tossed’ new clothes at her. He ordered her to get dressed and told her she was finally going home as part of a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel.
News of her salvation however came at a cost when she realised Itay and Omer would not be with her and would instead be ‘left here in this hell’.
As she was handed over to the Red Cross in Rafah, and then on to an Israeli ambulance, she finally allowed herself to smile for the first time in weeks.
And when she saw her parents and younger brother again, an emotionally-charged video captured the moment she sobbed tears of relief and happiness.
‘For 50 days I was alone. There was no one to tell me that everything will be okay, there was no one there to wipe my tears. I was there only for myself.
‘I had to take a deep breath and say to myself, “when you’ll be home you can cry”.
‘So when I saw my mum and dad and my brother, and I touched them, that’s when I just let everything out.’
Maya’s mistreatment resulted in deep, life-threatening infections, including a fungus growing inside her bone.
When she was finally released, other hostages were able to be reunited with their families and return home. But Maya remained in hospital for more than a year, where she was given intravenous antibiotics and underwent 10 operations.
Miraculously, Maya can now walk again – though she still has to undergo regular blood checks and has lost the ability to run.
‘Captivity really changed me,’ reflected Maya. ‘Before October 7, I was very naive, very innocent, like I felt like there is only good in the world and no-one means to do bad to you.
‘Then I met this pure evil, face to face. It changed the way I look at life, it changed the way I have faith in people.
‘But I realised there is also good in this world and there is still hope, because of my family, my friends, the doctors who saved me.
‘Captivity changed the way I look at life. Now I don’t take anything for granted.’
Nova Exhibition runs in Shoreditch, London, until July 15.
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