The mother of an Israeli-American man being held in Gaza has told the BBC that Israel and Hamas must urgently agree on a new ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s son Hersh, who turned 23 four days before he was kidnapped from the Nova festival on 7 October, was seen in captivity in a new video released last week.

She described how she felt when she first watched it.

“As soon as I heard his voice I started to cry because I haven’t heard his voice in half a year.

“To see him moving, and to see that he is clearly medically compromised, and that he’s fragile. His father Jon and I were both just crying, and I was holding my heart.”

“I don’t even know what I was saying. I was just making noises and crying, and Jon was crying”.

Hersh Goldberg-Polin was at the Nova music festival in a forested area close to the Gaza Strip when Hamas-led gunmen stormed Israel’s border fence, killing about 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 360 of those killed were attending the festival event.

Hersh ran several kilometres and sought refuge in a roadside bomb shelter with several dozen others during the attack, but gunmen gathered outside and began throwing in grenades.

Before Wednesday, the last time he had been seen alive was in a Hamas video that showed him being loaded onto a pick-up truck, with part of his left arm missing.

BBC / Titilayo Kupoliyi

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