News of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza: live updates

The account of the eight months that Kozlov spent in captivity, which his parents told in an interview, emerged after Israeli commandos rescued him and three other hostages on Saturday in central Gaza, in an operation that left dozens of Palestinians dead. These details provide more evidence that militants in Gaza are mistreating hostages, after people who were released last November during a temporary ceasefire narrated that they were subjected to physical, emotional and even sexual assault.

The risky rescue operation improved the public mood in Israel and sparked spontaneous celebrations, but it also highlighted the plight of more than 100 other hostages, living and dead, still trapped in Gaza.

“He said it was very difficult,” his mother, Evgeniya Kozlova, who spoke with his father, Mikhail Kozlov, told The New York Times this week in Tel Aviv. “It’s very difficult to put it into words.”

Hamas said it treated the hostages well compared to Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners, a claim strongly rejected by Israeli officials. In an apparent attempt to wage psychological warfare, his captors told Mr. Kozlov, 27, a Russian-Israeli, that the Israeli government had concluded that the hostages were a burden, Ms. Kozlova said.

“They were asking Andrei to remain very silent because they, the hostages, represent a problem for Israel,” she said. “They said Israel could solve this problem any way it wanted, including killing the hostages so they wouldn’t have to think about them anymore.”

The militants’ claims had an impact on Mr. Kozlov — so much so that when Israeli forces arrived in a civilian neighborhood in central Gaza to rescue him, she said, he was initially unsure whether they had come to rescue or kill him.

Since the start of the war, Israeli forces have rescued only seven of about 250 people kidnapped in Gaza during the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel. (More than 100 hostages were released in November as part of a short-term ceasefire; at least a third of the 120 captives remaining in Gaza have died, according to Israeli authorities.) Last week’s rescue operation also resulted in the deaths of more than 200 Palestinians, many of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities.

Israel criticized Hamas for holding hostages in civilian areas. Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official He said on Sunday The group tried to keep civilians away from the conflict. But Hamas has exploited Gaza’s urban areas to provide its fighters and weapons infrastructure with an extra layer of protection, running tunnels under neighborhoods, setting up rocket launch pads near civilian homes, and holding hostages in city centers.

Unlike the other hostages, Mr. Kozlov was never brought into Gaza’s vast underground tunnel network, and his guards told him that his conditions were much better than those of other hostages, his mother said. She said he received food throughout his captivity, but it was often simple items like pita bread, cheese and tomatoes.

His mother added that during his captivity, Mr. Kozlov only came out at night when he was being transferred to a new location. She added that he was transferred several times throughout the war.

Mr. Kozlov, Andrei’s father, said that when he and his wife discussed months ago whether they would rather save their son in a military operation or release him through a diplomatic agreement, they both preferred to reach an agreement. But since no agreement could be reached, they wanted to bring him home any way they could.

In response to a question about the Palestinian civilians who were killed while rescuing their son, Mr. Kozlov said he was saddened by their deaths.

“If there was such a possibility to avoid these victims, it would be much better,” he said.