Many of the hostages released from detention in Gaza by Hamas in November still require intensive treatment for the trauma from their weeks in captivity, a leading Israeli psychiatrist has said.

Renana Eitan, the head of psychiatry at the Ichilov Tel Aviv medical centre, said the hostages had undergone the worst abuse and trauma she had witnessed in her career.

Eitan said news footage of joyful reunions as 120 hostages were released in the last week of November masked a darker underlying reality.

The Ichilov Tel Aviv centre is consulting psychiatric institutes around the world and other organisations dealing with post-traumatic stress disorders.

The trauma experienced by hundreds of thousands of children and their parents in Gaza will also have long-term debilitating effects, psychiatrists and psychologists have warned, particularly as there are no therapeutic facilities left.

“I can see the seeds of that even now in the young people with whom our Gaza team is working amid bombs in shelters and on the rubble crowded streets,” he said.

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