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China-Middle East relations
ChinaDiplomacy

China-born Israeli woman Noa Argamani among those ‘kidnapped by Hamas terrorists’, embassy in Beijing says

  • The ‘Chinese-Israeli … born in Beijing’ was at a peace music festival when she was taken ‘to Gaza’, Israeli embassy in Beijing says on Weibo
  • Instagram account set up by family to help find her shows 25-year-old pleading for her life as she is taken away on a motorcycle

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Screen grab from social media shows Noa Argamani as she is taken hostage by Palestinian militants. Photo: via Reuters
Sylvie Zhuangin Beijing
A Beijing-born Chinese-Israeli woman named Noa Argamani was among people abducted by Hamas as the militant group raided a music festival near the border with Gaza, the Israeli embassy in China has confirmed.

“Noa is a Chinese-Israeli … born in Beijing. At the time, Noa was attending a peace music festival in southern Israel when she was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists and taken from Israel to Gaza,” the embassy said on its official Weibo account, the Chinese version of X, formerly Twitter.

A video clip posted on the account showed the 25-year-old screaming “Don’t kill me. No, no, no” while being taken away on a motorcycle from an outdoor music festival near Israel’s border with Gaza, as she stretched out her arms towards her boyfriend being marched along by militants.

Argamani, whose mother is Chinese, is among dozens of hostages believed to be in Hamas captivity following the militant group’s surprise multi-front attack on Israel in the early hours of Saturday.

Tel Aviv has responded with air strikes on Gaza, after declaring war and vowing to destroy the “military and governing capabilities” of Hamas, which controls the blockaded Gaza Strip.

The engineering student from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in southern Israel is less than a week shy of her 26th birthday, according to her Instagram and Facebook accounts.

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