Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said today is “a day of deep reflection and pain”, as he commemorated the victims of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.
He was speaking at an event marking a year since Hamas gunmen stormed across Gaza’s border, killing about 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage.
Lammy said he was thinking of the “many hostages that are still held in Gaza”, as he paid tribute at South Tottenham United Synagogue.
He referenced Emily Damari, the only British-Israeli hostage who remains in captivity. Ms Damari’s family have “no word of her fate or how she is doing”, he added.
Ms Damari, 28, was taken hostage from Kibbutz Kfar Aza when Hamas gunmen stormed across Gaza’s border into Israel on 7 October last year, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others as hostages.
A total of 97 hostages remain unaccounted for.
Israel responded with a military campaign in Gaza, which has killed thousands in the Palestinian territory.
“This is a painful day for the Jewish community across this country and across the diaspora,” Lammy told reporters in his constituency.
“It is a day of deep reflection and pain thinking about 7 October, the worst attack on the Jewish community since the Holocaust,” he added.
Addressing a memorial event in London on Sunday, Ms Damari’s mother Mandy said that hostages released last November had told her they had had contact with Emily in captivity.
On Sunday, Sir Keir said the country must “unequivocally” stand with the Jewish community and described 7 October as the “darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust”.
“As a father, a husband, a son, a brother – meeting the families of those who lost their loved ones last week was unimaginable. Their grief and pain are ours, and it is shared in homes across the land,” Sir Keir said.