BINYAMINA, Israel (AP) — Rachel Dancyg never thought she would see her dog again after it disappeared in the Hamas attack that sparked the ongoing war with Israel.
Her ex-husband and brother were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel and killed. She thought her beloved pet had suffered the same fate. So when a soldier called the family on Tuesday night, telling them that Billie had been found alive in Gaza, it was hard to believe.
“It's a miracle,” Dancyg told The Associated Press on Wednesday, hours after being reunited with her now 3 1/2-year old Cavalier King Charles spaniel. “It doesn’t make sense ... People didn’t survive. How did she?"
The reunion brought a rare touch of joy in Israel after 18 months of devastating war.
The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack killed some 1,200 people and resulted in more than 250 others being kidnapped. Nearly 60 hostages remain in Gaza, more than half of whom are believed to be dead.
An Israeli offensive launched after the attack has killed more than 51,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to local health authorities, and reduced large parts of Gaza to rubble. U.S.-led efforts to broker a ceasefire and bring home remaining hostages appear to be at a standstill.
Nir Oz was one of the hardest hit communities, with nearly a quarter of the approximately 400 residents killed or captured in the 2023 attack. For Israelis, it stands out as the embodiment of their country’s vulnerability that day. Soldiers took hours to respond. Some families have said they saw Hamas militants killing or kidnapping animals.
It's unclear how Billie ended up in Gaza. When Hamas entered Dancyg's home, she hid in the safe room with her family for eight hours, holding the door shut. But she fled so quickly there was no time to find the dog. For months, the community looked everywhere for Billie, but there was no trace of her.
The family later moved to northern Israel.
Then, on Tuesday night, Dancyg’s daughter received a phone call from a soldier who had just returned from Gaza. He said he had their dog.
“I couldn’t believe it. I asked for a photo. I was really confused,” said her daughter, Lee Maor.
The soldier said he found Billie in Gaza's southern city of Rafah — about 9 miles (15 kilometers) from the Kibbutz — days earlier, and she immediately gravitated toward his troops, not leaving their side. It might have been because Billie heard them speaking Hebrew, he told them.
Speaking to Israeli television, reserve soldier Aviad Shapira said he found Billie among the rubble and called out to her. “I said ‘shalom’ and she jumped on me,” he said.
He had a feeling that she didn't belong in Gaza and that there was a story behind her, Shapira said. He brought the dog to a veterinarian and found the family’s contact information on a chip inside the animal.
Stroking Billie on her lap, Dancyg says it will take time to see how the odyssey has affected her. Billie appears happy to be home, but she seems disoriented and has lost weight, Dancyg said.
While Israeli media happily reported Billie's return, the Nir Oz community reminded people not to forget what the family went through. In a Facebook post, the kibbutz called the reunion a "little light in a lot of sorrow.”
The body of Dancyg's ex-husband, Alex, 76, was recovered by the army and returned in August. The body of her brother Itzhak Elgarat, 68, was returned earlier this year as part of a ceasefire.
For Dancyg, Billie's return gives her some sense of closure. Yet she said it is bittersweet knowing there are hostages still in Gaza.
“I can’t get out of this trauma as long as they are there," she said.
Rachel Dancyg holds her dog, Billie, on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. Israeli soldiers found Billie in the Gaza Strip, 18 months after she disappeared during Hamas' attack on Dancyg's Kibbutz of Nir Oz, in Binyamina, Israel. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Rachel Dancyg holds her dog, Billie, on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. Israeli soldiers found Billie in the Gaza Strip, 18 months after she disappeared during Hamas' attack on Dancyg's Kibbutz of Nir Oz, in Binyamina, Israel. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Billie, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, rests in Binyamina, Israel, on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. Israeli soldiers found Billie in the Gaza Strip 18 months after she disappeared during Hamas' attack on Nir Oz in Binyamina, Israel. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Rachel Dancyg holds her dog, Billie, on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. Israeli soldiers found Billie in the Gaza Strip, 18 months after she disappeared during Hamas' attack on Dancyg's Kibbutz of Nir Oz, in Binyamina, Israel. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
JERUSALEM (AP) — The United Nations’ emergency relief coordinator urged Israel on Thursday to lift its blockade of aid into the Gaza Strip, saying the halting of humanitarian aid amounts to “cruel collective punishment.”
The U.N. said thousands of Palestinians had breached a humanitarian field office in Gaza late Wednesday looking for aid. They took medicine and damaged vehicles in the melee but caused no injuries to staff.
Israel has blocked any humanitarian aid from entering the territory since the end of a ceasefire in March, throwing Gaza into what is believed to be the worst humanitarian crisis in nearly 19 months of war. Israel has said the blockade and its renewed military campaign are intended to pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages it still holds and to disarm.
The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. Hamas is still holding 59 hostages, 24 of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
As Israel continued its strikes on the Palestinian enclave, another 18 people were killed and dozens more were wounded, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
A United Nations aid group said its staff were safely evacuated after thousands of Palestinians breached its Gaza field office Wednesday evening and took medications. An official with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, called the looting “the direct result of unbearable and prolonged deprivation.”
”The looting, while devastating, is not surprising in the face of total systemic collapse. We are witnessing the consequences of a society brought to its knees by prolonged siege and violence,” said Louise Wateridge, a senior emergency officer at the agency.
The breach, which took place at an UNWRA training center and field office, also caused damage to agency trucks and buses, she said. No injuries were reported among the staff.
Israel’s war against Hamas has killed more than 52,000 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, including more than 2,200 in the six weeks since Israel shattered the ceasefire on March 18. Some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Israel by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attacks which started the war.
The United Nations says that more than 3,000 aid trucks with lifesaving supplies are backed up at the border outside Gaza. UNRWA said Thursday that the Israeli blockade means their trucks can't reach the 1 million children whose lives are in danger without them.
The agency also said that about 660,000 Palestinian children are out of school because of the ongoing war. UNRWA said in an X post that “the crossings must reopen, and the siege must be lifted.”
Israel has been striking homes, shelters and public areas daily since ending a ceasefire in March. It also has cut off the territory’s 2 million Palestinians from all imports, including food and medicine, for nearly two months.
U.N. food stockpiles have run out and aid groups say thousands of Palestinian children are malnourished. Israel says its blockade aims to pressure Hamas to release hostages. However, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights warned this week that starving civilians as a military tactic constitutes a war crime.
Tom Fletcher, the U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, said Thursday that while the hostages should be released and should never have been taken in the first place, international law mandates that Israel allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
“Aid, and the civilian lives it saves, should never be a bargaining chip,” he said in a statement. “Blocking aid starves civilians. It leaves them without basic medical support. It strips them of dignity and hope. It inflicts a cruel collective punishment. Blocking aid kills.”
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, has described severe shortages of food, water and medicine in Gaza as medical services collapse and charity kitchens shut down because of a lack of supplies. Hospitals have reported that cases of malnourished pregnant and breastfeeding women are rising sharply, and most newborns are now being born underweight.
Fletcher stressed that “the humanitarian movement is independent, impartial and neutral. We believe that all civilians are equally worthy of protection.”
He said that a recent proposal by Israeli authorities regarding ways to distribute aid “does not meet the minimum bar for principled humanitarian support.” Israel has proposed taking over aid distribution in Gaza or using private companies for the distribution.
The United Kingdom joined calls for aid to be allowed into Gaza.
“The healthcare system in Gaza is near collapse,” the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office posted on X. “Aid supplies must be allowed in, medical workers protected, and the sick and wounded allowed to temporarily leave Gaza for treatment.”
Israeli strikes in Gaza killed more than two dozen people from Wednesday afternoon into Thursday, bringing the overall death toll since the war started to more than 52,400 people, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. More than 2,300 of the deaths have occurred since the ceasefire collapsed on March 18, it said.
The ministry doesn't differentiate between civilians and militant deaths, but says more than half the dead have been women and children. Israel says it has killed more than 20,000 militants, without providing details on those deaths.
On Thursday afternoon, the ministry said the bodies of 18 people and 77 wounded people had arrived at hospitals in the past 24 hours.
Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip.
Palestinians search the rubble of a house targeted by an Israeli army strike that killed at least five people in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Islam Abu Sahloul mourns the death of her sister Lamia, 32, who was killed when an Israeli army strike hit a house killing at least five members of the Abu Sahloul family, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A boy looks as Palestinians search the rubble of a house targeted by an Israeli army strike that killed at least five people in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Islam Abu Sahloul mourns the death of her sister Lamia, 32, who was killed when an Israeli army strike hit a house killing at least five people, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A wounded man and a child are taken into the Nasser hospital after an Israeli army strike hit a house killing at least five members of the Abu Sahloul family, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinian children search for belongings in a house damaged by an Israeli army strike that killed at least five people in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians search the rubble of a house targeted by an Israeli army strike that killed at least five people in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Relatives mourn over the body of Osama Abu Sahloul, who was killed when an Israeli army strike hit a house in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, killing at least five members of the Abu Sahloul family, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A wounded man sits inside an ambulance at the Nasser hospital after an Israeli army strike hit a house killing at least five members of the Abu Sahloul family, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians search the rubble of a house targeted by an Israeli army strike that killed killing at least five members of the Abu Sahloul family in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinian women look as residents search the rubble of a house targeted by an Israeli army strike that killed killing at least five members of the Abu Sahloul family in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A child and a woman look as Palestinians search the rubble of a house targeted by an Israeli army strike that killed killing at least five members of the Abu Sahloul family in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Islam Abu Sahloul, center, mourns the death of her sister Lamia, 32, who was killed when an Israeli army strike hit a house killing at least five people, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
