\n<\/p>\n
Yoni Asher\u2019s nightmare began early on Saturday morning during a phone call with his wife, Doron Asher Katz.<\/p>\n
Whispering down the phone line, Ms. Asher Katz, 34, said that she, her mother, and their two small daughters were trapped inside her mother\u2019s safe room in a village near the Gaza border.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe told me, \u2018There are terrorists inside the house,\u2019\u201d Mr. Asher said in an interview.<\/p>\n
Then came worse news: Ms. Asher Katz\u2019s mother\u2019s life partner, Gadi Moses, had left the safe room to reason with the intruders.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said they left \u2014 and they took him with them,\u201d Mr. Asher said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Asher, 37, hoped that his spouse and children were safe, at least. But then the phone lines went dead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
It was the last time Mr. Asher heard from his wife.<\/p>\n
Tracking her phone remotely, he saw that the device was taken on Saturday to Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza, suggesting that she, too, had been kidnapped.<\/p>\n
Then a video circulated on social media of abducted Israelis being driven through the territory, bundled into the back of a pickup truck. In the video, a gunman attempts to spread a kind of blindfold over a woman\u2019s head.<\/p>\n
Mr. Asher recognized the woman. It was Doron.<\/p>\n
He said his daughters, Raz and Aviv, 5 and 3, and his mother-in-law, Efrat Katz, 67, were squashed alongside her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
They are now among an estimated 150 hostages inside Gaza, according to the Israeli authorities, most of them captured from small Israeli border towns on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
His family intended to return home to central Israel on Saturday evening, after a short visit to their grandmother\u2019s village. Instead, it isn\u2019t clear when, or if, he\u2019ll see them again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t sleep \u2014 I\u2019m living outside my own body,\u201d Mr. Asher said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have two little babies, two little girls,\u201d he added. \u201cThese little babies should not be held or kept by terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n