Freed hostage reveals: Dozens of hostages were held at Gaza's Nasser hospital

Sharon Aloni Cunio, a woman who was kidnapped together with her twin three-year-old daughters by Hamas terrorists on October 7 and subsequently freed in late November, spoke to CNN's Anderson Cooper yesterday (Wednesday) on what life was like in Hamas captivity and since she and her daughters were freed.

Cunio noted that while she and her children were released, her husband David, who was kidnapped along with them, is still held as a hostage in Gaza, forcing her to play the role of both parents for their children. She misses him greatly and watches videos and listens to voicemails of him to feel closer.

“My mind couldn’t be happy about the fact that we were released because of my concerns about David, and his health… and his mental state of mind,” she said.

Cunio confirmed that hostages were held in hospitals in Gaza which were used by the Hamas terrorist organization for military purposes, as she herself was held in one such hospital, Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, where she was brought nine days after the kidnapping.

"We were taken there up until the end," she described. "There were about three rooms of hostages, each one was 10-12 people in it. Small rooms, 12 square feet."

She said that one male nurse came to check on them every other day.

The hostages were looked in the room and forced to knock on the door to ask to use the bathroom. Answers could take minutes or hours, which became even more difficult as the hostages' health deteriorated and they suffered diarrhea and vomiting. What little food they were given was often moldy.

When the family was kidnapped, they were separated from one of their daughters and feared she had been killed, but she was returned to them at the hospital.

For several nights after their reunion, the child "would wake up screaming and wouldn’t calm down for hours,” Cunio said. This caused their captors to yell at them to be quiet.

She said that she "used to cry almost every day" and her husband would himself in the face until he started bleeding due to the terrible conditions they were in.

Cunio said that when she and the girls were released, it was incredibly difficult to part with her husband, who was not included in the hostage deal that accompanied the one-week truce in late November.

“We just sat there and cried and I begged him not to go and he told me he was so scared and asked me to fight for him,” she said. She even suggested staying with him and sending their daughters back to Israel without either parent to stay with their extended family.

“Everything needs to be done in order to make a deal and bring them home,” she said.

“Because you deserve it, and I love you and I can’t wait to see you,” Cunio said to her husband David.