Israel-Hamas LIVE: IDF tanks move in on Indonesia Hospital in Gaza as Qatar says mediators are inching closer to hostage release deal

Emily Hand turned nine years old on Friday. Like many little girls around the world, she loves singing and dancing like Beyoncé.

But unlike those other girls, Emily “spent her birthday in the tunnels of Gaza,” one of several hostages kidnapped by Hamas during its deadly attack on Israel on October 7, according to her father Thomas Hand.

“She wouldn’t even know it was her birthday.” She doesn’t know what day it is or what date,” Hand, an Irish native, told AFP on Sunday, launching a heartbreaking appeal for the United Kingdom to bring Emily home.

According to initial reports, the 63-year-old thought his daughter was dead.

“But it was a case of mistaken identity,” he said on the sidelines of a demonstration for the release of more than 200 people detained by the Palestinian Islamist group.

DNA tests don’t match, he added.

Watch Mr Hand speak outside Downing Street on Sunday:

“Later we had an eyewitness… (who) saw her being taken by the terrorists in a van towards Gaza” after the attack on Kibbutz Beeri, Hand said.

For the father, who moved to Israel at the age of 32, Beeri had been idyllic. “Seriously, it was heaven on earth…until it all came crashing down” on that “terrifying day.”

Kibbutz Beeri was the scene of some of the worst atrocities when Gaza-based Hamas militants crossed the militarized border, killing around 1,200 people and taking around 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials.