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The chief executive of a children’s hospital in Israel says the trauma suffered by youngsters released by Hamas is so great they “just don’t know how to treat” them.

A total of 78 women and children were brought back to Israel from Gaza during the seven-day truce last week, having been held for around 50 days by Hamas since being taken hostage on 7 October.

The children came back “very skinny”, according to Schneider Children’s Medical Centre’s chief executive, and had to ration the food they got during their captivity.

Read more: Israel-Gaza latest as IDF operations in northern Gaza ‘nearly complete’

While they are beginning to eat normal portions, Dr Efrat Bron-Harlev said “the hard part is how to treat their soul” – adding “we just don’t know how to treat those children”.

“We’ve read everything possible about children in captivity with their children, without families, things have happened in different places,” she said in a news conference.

“But an event like this, of children facing what they did on 7 October as an event by itself.

“And then in captivity in such a horrific place for so many days, with or without others… this is something we did not know how to deal with.”

They have a “very large team” of social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists, she said, who have seen “the worst” over 33 years at the centre, but these problems are entirely new.

One child told staff she “actually thought everyone forgot” about her, Dr Bron-Harlev said, because Hamas told her “nobody cares about you”.

Read more:
Who are the first 79 Israeli hostages released by Hamas?
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“They told me, she said, that nobody cares about you anymore,” she said.

“Nobody’s looking for you. Nobody wants you back. You can hear the bombs around. All they want to do is to kill you and us together.

“A 13-year-old girl – this is what she has to hear for 50 days.”

She said the immediate challenge is for her to “believe her parents were looking for her” and “care for her”.

“This is not something that takes a day or two to even start understanding how you make that child believe,” she added.

Other children have been asking staff for permission to open doors or cabinets, while some have even asked if they can shower for the first time since their kidnapping.

Some only got to bathe with a bucket of cold water during captivity, she said, “if they’re lucky”.

Dozens of buses carrying more than 400 unaccompanied children have been intercepted in South Africa in an anti-trafficking operation, authorities have said.

South African border officials said 443 children under the age of eight were found travelling from Zimbabwe without parents or legal guardians.

The children were being “trafficked” into South Africa, the officials said.

Police stopped and searched the 42 buses entering through the Zimbabwean side of the Beitbridge border post on Saturday evening, and they were then sent back to Zimbabwe.

“We denied them entry and activated the Zimbabwean officials to process them back into Zimbabwe,” said Mike Masiapato, commissioner of South Africa’s Border Management Agency.

However, an organisation representing foreign nationals living in South Africa has suggested another possible explanation for their entry into Zimbabwe.

The Africa Diaspora Forum said it believed the children were being sent to visit their parents who are working in South Africa.

Ngqabutho Mabhena, chairman of the organisation, said it was common that children were sent over the border without proper documentation, particularly near the end of the year.

Mr Mabhena said: “We always tell Zimbabwean parents living in South Africa that, if they arrange for their children to come to South Africa, they must… arrange all necessary documentation.

“It is irresponsible for parents to let children travel without passports and to travel with strangers. We have addressed this with parents.”

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More than a million Zimbabweans live in South Africa, Africa’s most advanced economy – many of them illegally.

Many moved over the last 15 years to escape economic turmoil in Zimbabwe.

South Africa launched a new border force in October to clamp down on illegal migration.