DON PILA, Thailand – When Thai farm labourer Anucha Angkaew scrambled out of the bunker where he had been sheltering from rocket strikes on Israel near the Gaza Strip on Oct 7, he expected to see Israeli soldiers.

Instead, he and his five Thai colleagues were accosted by 10 armed militants, whom he identified as Hamas gunmen by the Palestine flags on their sleeves.

“We shouted ‘Thailand, Thailand’,” said Mr Anucha, a soft-spoken 28-year-old with a wispy goatee. “But they didn’t care.”

Two of the six Thai nationals were killed soon after, including a friend whom Mr Anucha said was shot dead in front of him.

The rest were forced onto a truck for a roughly 30-minute ride into Gaza.

Mr Anucha’s first-person account offers a glimpse into what many hostages endured – and some continue to endure.

He described sleeping on a sandy floor and beatings by Hamas captors, who he said singled out Israelis for especially brutal treatment.

To keep their hopes up, the four Thai men relied on chess games on a makeshift board, memories of family and their craving for Thai food.

Few of the freed hostages have spoken at length about their ordeal, though others who have since been released also described beatings and death threats.

Hamas officials did not immediately respond to a written request for comment on Mr Anucha’s account.

“I thought I would die,” he said on Dec 6 at his family home in rural north-eastern Thailand, where he returned in December after 50 days in captivity.

Almost all that time was spent inside two small underground rooms, secured by armed guards and accessed by dark narrow tunnels.

At least 240 people – Israelis and foreign nationals – were abducted on Oct 7 by Hamas gunmen when they attacked southern Israel. Some 1,200 people were also killed, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 100 hostages – largely women, children and non-Israelis – have been released.

In retaliation for the Oct 7 attack, Israel mounted a devastating bombing campaign and ground offensive that has killed more than 15,000 people, according to figures from Palestinian health officials.

Some 130 people, including eight Thai nationals, remain captive.

Before the war, about 30,000 Thai labourers worked in the agriculture sector, making them one of Israel’s largest migrant worker groups. Israel offers the farmhands higher wages than they would earn at home.

Thailand, which has friendly ties with Israel, recognised Palestine as a sovereign state in 2012. 

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has compared the dead Thai hostages to “heroes” and said the released captives would receive the same benefits as their Israeli counterparts.

Two meals, two bottles of water

Once in Gaza, the uniformed militants handed the Thai nationals to a small group of men who took them to an abandoned house and tied their hands behind their backs.

The Thais were joined by a terrified 18-year-old Israeli, a man Mr Anucha said he knew from Kibbutz Re’im, where he worked on an avocado farm.

Beatings began shortly after, as their captors punched and kicked them. “We shouted ‘Thailand, Thailand’,” he said, which eased the intensity of the blows. The young Israeli was not spared.

An hour later, all five were put into another truck that drove for about 30 minutes to a small building that led into a tunnel.

Near the mouth of the tunnel, they were beaten again and photographed, Mr Anucha said, before walking through a dark, roughly metre-wide passage to a small room.

In this windowless space, which measured about 1.5m by 1.5m and was lit by a bulb, the five were joined by another Israeli man.

The militants continued kicking and punching the captives for two days, Mr Anucha said.

After that, they persisted with another two days of beatings for the Israelis, who were whipped using electrical wires.

Mr Anucha was not seriously injured, but weeks after his release from captivity, his wrist still bore marks from the restraints. 

The captives slept on the bare, sandy floor. The six men were served flatbread twice a day and shared two bottles of water between them that were replenished daily.

Their toilet was a hole in the ground near the room, where they were taken by one of eight guards armed with assault weapons that resembled AK-47s. The guards told them not to talk among themselves.

“I felt hopeless,” Mr Anucha said.

He initially counted down the days by the number of meals. After four days, the six were marched to another room.

Mr Anucha said he saw during the walk that the tunnel, which was lit by flashlights carried by their captors, was lined with metal doors.

'Thailand, go home'

Their new room was more spacious. They had plastic sheets to sleep on. Three bulbs lit the space. An alcove served as their toilet.

The beatings stopped. The food improved to include nuts, butter and, later, rice.

Still using meals to measure time, Mr Anucha left scratches on the floor to mark the number of days in captivity.

That changed when a guard brought in some papers for them to sign. He, like the other guards, spoke only Arabic. The Israelis interpreted for Mr Anucha, who said he speaks rudimentary Hebrew.

The guard left behind a white ballpoint pen. The captives used it to mark time, draw tattoos and sketch a chessboard on the plastic sheet. Chess pieces were crafted out of a pink-and-green toothpaste box.

Another distraction was talk of food. Mr Anucha craved soi ju, a Thai delicacy of pieces of raw beef dipped in spicy sauce that he dreamt and spoke of.

“Food was a source of hope,” he said, smiling.

Weeks passed. Mr Anucha had no inkling of the Israeli raids and bombings above ground. He often thought of home, his father, his seven-year-old daughter and his partner of 14 years.

On Day 35, a man dressed in black arrived for a brief inspection. From his demeanour and the respectful behaviour of the guards, the captives surmised he was a senior Hamas leader.

Their routine resumed until the day a guard arrived following their first meal of the day and announced: “Thailand, go home.”

The four Thai nationals were led through tunnels for roughly two hours and arrived above ground at a Hamas facility, where a handful of female Israeli hostages were also waiting.

Some 11 hours later, they were handed over to the Red Cross, which drove them out of Gaza on Nov 25.

“I didn’t think I would get released,” Mr Anucha said. “It was like I was reborn.”

But the hardest part was still what he saw on Oct 7, he said. “I lost my friend in front of my eyes.” REUTERS