Avivit Yablonka, the sister of Hanan Yablonka, an Israeli hostage abducted during the October 7 attack and murdered in Hamas captivity, told the Daily Mail how her brother was brutally shot in the chest before terrorists dragged him into a pickup truck and took him to Gaza, where they executed him in a hospital bed.
According to Avivit, Hanan was then placed in a bag and concealed between the walls of a Hamas tunnel in northern Gaza alongside the bodies of several other hostages.
Avivit Yablonka
(Photo: Hostages and Missing Families Forum)
Hanan’s tragic fate remained unknown to his desperate family for nearly eight months, until the IDF located his remains in a special operation and returned him to Israel along with the bodies of Orión Hernández and Michel Nisenbaum.
Just hours before his death on October 7, 2023, Hanan made the spontaneous decision to attend the Nova music festival without telling his family or having a chance to say goodbye.
Avivit was among a group of survivors, former hostages and relatives of victims and hostages who traveled to London this month for the opening of the Nova exhibition, which presented an interactive timeline of the events as they unfolded.
More than 40,000 people visited the exhibition, including former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and senior British politicians Wes Streeting, David Lammy and Angela Rayner.
A day before the exhibition closed Wednesday, Avivit described how she and her family suffered through the many months in which Hanan was listed as missing. Confirmation that he had been abducted to Gaza came only after 12 weeks. They then waited several more months before learning that he had been killed.
For Avivit, 51, a mother of two who lives in Ramat Hasharon, it was a major shock to discover that her brother had been anywhere near the Nova festival on October 7, as he had not told his sisters or parents before leaving with friends that night.
“I never got the chance to see him or say goodbye to him,” Avivit said in an interview.
“On 6 October was a holiday in Israel, so my brother and my sister went to my parents' home for dinner, but I went to my friends' that night. This dinner is the last time they saw him. Every day I think about this dinner, but of course, nobody knew what would happen the next day.”
She said the family saw rockets overhead but that the attack felt different because of the sheer number of launches.
“This is something that never happened before, so I drove to my parents' home so that we could be together,” she said.
They watched the news together and began crying as they saw and heard reports of the atrocities.
“We were not worried for my brother. We didn't know he was there at Nova. We thought he was with his friend Lior at his house,” she said.
Hanan's friend, late soccer player Lior Asulin
(Photo: Oz Mualem)
After hours of sending messages to check whether Hanan was safe, the family’s worst fears began to materialize. They were told that he and his friend, former soccer player Lior Asulin, had decided in the early morning hours to drive to the festival with a group of friends.
“When we finally realized Hanan had gone to Nova, life changed forever,” Avivit said.
The bodies of Asulin and the friends who were with him were found near the Mefalsim junction on Route 232, about 19 kilometers, or 12 miles, from the festival site.
Hanan’s bullet-riddled car was found nearby, with his keys, phone and identification card still inside. There was no sign of him.
It took months of speaking with witnesses, reviewing video footage and obtaining information from authorities before the family was able to piece together what had happened.
“Hanan, his friend Lior, and two women fled toward his car and left the festival,” Avivit said. “But on the way, a car in front of them came across traffic and turned around - crashing into their car on the way. Hanan left his car to check on the other vehicle when he was suddenly shot by terrorists in the chest. He fell down onto the road.”
She said Hanan was critically wounded and dying. The terrorists then turned their weapons on his friends and killed them all.
“They put Hanan on a truck and took him to a hospital inside Gaza,” she said. “But when the doctors saw he was dying, they decided to shoot him - in his head, three times. They put him inside a bag and hid the body inside the walls of a tunnel in Jabaliya.”
Hanan Yablonka, Michel Nisenbaum and Orión Hernández
On May 24, 2024, Israeli forces recovered Hanan’s body in a special operation alongside the remains of Michel Nisenbaum, 59, who had set out to rescue his granddaughter from the festival, and Orión Hernández, 32, the partner of Shani Louk, a German-Israeli woman who had also been kidnapped from the Nova festival and killed in captivity.
“It's a miracle they found him,” Avivit said. “The terrorists put the dead bodies inside bags, inside the walls. The army could have easily destroyed this tunnel without seeing him there - but thankfully they saw the bags, and they took them to Israel.”
Hanan’s remains were ultimately identified through dental records.
“I still can't believe this is what happened,” his sister said. “And nearly three years on, only now my father understands Hanan is not coming back home. My brother was my little brother, he was so special. We were always together, we were best friends. I smile when I think of him. I smile and cry together.”
Avivit said she still mourns her brother every day but draws hope from being with former hostages and survivors of the massacre.
“To be with them means I can feel my brother,” she said. “They give me the hope, they give me life. I see how they smile, how they dance and I know what happened to them. They are strong so I must be too. They need us - and we need them.”
She concluded the interview by saying: “It was the best thing to see people finally came back home. Hanan lost his life but he came back home to us, the others came back. That is what makes me happy.”