Bannawat Saethao was one of dozens of Thai workers kidnapped by Hamas.
For the first time, he shares the story of his terrifying capture — and the emotional moment he first met his baby daughter.
Bannawat Saethao points to the fine white line on the palm of his right hand.
The scar is so faint it's barely visible, but it's a constant reminder of the recent horrors he's endured.
The 28-year-old was one of 31 Thai nationals taken hostage by Hamas on October 7.
After 15 long months of captivity, he was finally released alongside four of his compatriots and arrived home in early February.
It's with these hands that he laboured on a potato farm in Israel for months, hoping to earn enough to pay off his debts and send money home to his young family.
The same hands that, after he was chased down and shot by Hamas militants, he raised in a moment of sheer terror.
And it's these hands that, until a couple of weeks ago, had never held his youngest child.
Areeya was just one month old when Bannawat was captured. He had only ever known her through a screen.
"I never held my daughter's hands," he said.
The prospect of meeting her for the first time and being reunited with his loved ones overwhelmed him.
"I am usually kind of cool-headed and a calm person, I hardly express my emotion," he said.
"But that day when I called my dad, my mum, my wife and my kids, oh … I cried like I could not control myself."
Half a world away
Among the clay-coloured earth and deep green leaves of the family lychee farm, Bannawat opens up for the first time about his traumatic experience.
"I was scared at the beginning, but I was scared until I felt numb. It was beyond fear already."
His family is part of the Miao ethnic minority, also called the Hmong.
"A lot of highland ethnic minorities face some difficulties with regard to finding full-time, secure employment, partly due to geography, but also due to labour market discrimination," said Sudarat Musikawong, associate professor of sociology at Mahidol University in Thailand.
Their home in Nan province's Pangkae village, northern Thailand, feels like a world away from Israel and the conflict in Gaza.
But like many workers from Thailand before him, Bannawat travelled more than 8,000 kilometres away for agricultural work in Israel.
On a potato farm in Yesha in the Negev Desert, he was able to earn up to 47,000 baht (almost $2,200) per month — three times the salary he'd earn if he stayed in Thailand — to help him pay off loans and support his growing family.
Thai workers make up the largest cohort of foreign agriculture labourers in Israel. After Israelis, Thais were the nationality worst affected by the October 7 attacks.
[Image: Maps]Israel says Hamas took 251 people hostage and killed 1,200 on that day. Palestinian health authorities say the ensuing military campaign from Israel has killed more than 46,000 people.
Bannawat had been working in Israel for around nine months before he was taken hostage.
Captured
Bannawat remembers that morning vividly. He woke early, video-called his wife and parents, and cooed at the new baby.
He heard an explosion in the sky — which was not uncommon.
When a second explosion sounded, his fellow workers entered a bunker for safety.
Bannawat was about to join them when one of his friends asked if the back door was closed.
"I said, 'I will go and check,' I volunteered."
It was a fateful decision.
"My friend shouted, 'Don't go, don't go,' — I was stubborn and walked to the door in the back."
Bannawat said he poked his head out and saw armed men. As they began to run towards him, he realised with shock that they were not Israeli soldiers.
"I started to run," he said.
"They chased me and kept shooting, I kept running. It was a sandy road I could see the impact of the bullet kicking up the dirt.
"They shot here," he said, pointing to his right hand, "and here," he added, gesturing to his shoulder.
He fell face down on the ground. In that moment, he thought he would not survive.
"I was scared, I put my hands up and shouted: 'Thailand, Thailand! I don't know [anything], I am sorry.'"
One of the assailants ran to Bannawat and stepped on his head, forcing his face into the sand.
The militant shot at the ground around Bannawat, before pulling him up by the shirt and dragging him away.
He said his captors took him to a hospital to have his wounds X-rayed, cleaned and wrapped.
For Bannawat's wife, Wichayada Saeyang, there was agonising silence.
"At noon, I could not reach him, he had gone quiet. I called the whole night, but the line could not be connected," she said.
The next morning her sister-in-law ran to her, saying a relative had witnessed Bannawat being shot and taken away.
"I did not believe, I didn't think it was Bannawat," she said.
Over the next few months, with the support of Bannawat's parents, she struggled to raise their three children.
She was stressed and worried. She didn't have enough breastmilk for her newborn.
"I must keep fighting and be both mother and father for them."
Held hostage
Bannawat said he was initially detained with two other men in a house, but they were relocated and he was detained alone for about a month.
Some weeks he was detained in makeshift tents, other times in darkened homes on Gaza's streets.
But he was always kept hidden, and moved about a dozen times in secret.
"They always moved us at night while people were sleeping," he said.
"If they took us outside they would dress us up as women; our head was covered, only the eyes were not covered."
At one point, he was held with two other recently released Thai hostages — Watchara Sriaoun, 33, and Sathian Suwannakham, 35.
They often lamented about how they had been caught up in a conflict so far removed from their lives in Thailand.
"It was nothing to do with us, but they captured us," he said.
"It was like we did not commit any crimes but we were locked in prison."
The worst moments, he said, were when he and other hostages were abandoned by their captors for six days amid severe fighting.
"We ate raw flour, there was no gas, no electricity, nothing."
Sometimes they were held in little more than a square room with wooden poles covered with a tarp.
"We could get out from the inside, but they told us not to. They would kill us if we did," he said.
"I used to plan to escape but then I thought, 'Then what, where could I go next?'"
Release
After 480 days, Bannawat was released alongside his compatriots Watchara and Sathian, as well as Surasak Rumnao, 32, and Pongsak Thaenna, 36.
But there is still one Thai hostage remaining in Gaza.
Amid tearful reunions at the airport in Bangkok, Thai Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa said authorities were determined to bring him home.
"The other important thing is that we still have one more Thai national who remains in captivity. We are not at a relief yet," he said.
When Bannawat's captors told him he would be released, at first he didn't believe it.
He was meant to be part of an earlier hostage release, but sudden fighting derailed that plan.
It didn't really hit him until he was able to call his family from a hospital in Israel.
He broke down in tears.
"I finally saw my father, mother and my wife's faces for real, not just though the phone camera," he said, after an emotional reunion in Bangkok.
"It was not just a dream, it was a reality."
He echoed a sentiment his fellow Thai hostages have uttered: "It was like I died, and I was reborn again."
Homecoming
While he wasn't there to see his baby girl Areeya's first steps, Bannawat is determined not to miss out on any more milestones.
"I could not imagine how she looked like as a baby compared to older than one year now," he said.
"And when I came back, I saw that, oh, she looks like me. Fair skin like me, she eats a lot and is a bit chubby."
At first, Areeya and his older daughters, Darin, 7, and Alisa, 4, were a little confused at their father's presence.
But within a day they were eager for him to play with them, insisting on sleeping in the bed with their parents to be close to their father.
Bannawat and the other hostages will be compensated by the Israel Insurance Institute, receiving a one-off payment of around 600,000 baht (almost $28,000), as well as monthly assistance of around $1,400 until he's 67, with further compensation to follow.
It's money that means his family can build a home — the whirr of construction equipment already humming around them — and he won't need to migrate for work like he did in the past.
Despite the conflict, farm work in Israel is still an attractive option for Thais.
Mahidol University's Sudarat Musikawong said Thai migration to Israel has been happening since the 1980s into the construction and agriculture sectors.
She said wage stagnation in Thailand was a major factor, especially in the poorer northern and north-east regions of the country.
"So you will see many people struggling just to make ends meet, to raise their families, to pay for aging parents, just basic means of getting a decent wage," she said.
Such migrant work was initially facilitated by brokerage firms and later by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), but today is mostly done through bilateral government agreements.
There were 30,000 Thai labourers in Israel at the time of the October 7 attacks.
While thousands were repatriated afterwards, Thailand resumed sending workers to Israel in June last year.
The conflict highlighted the plight of Thailand's migrant workers Professor Musikawong said, arguing it would be ideal to keep labourers securely employed in their own country with better conditions and pay.
"Israel is definitely a top destination for workers," she said, adding it was a bandaid solution to issues of underemployment, wage stagnation and entrenched poverty that have persisted for 30 years.
There are around 38,000 Thai migrants currently working in Israel.
But Bannawat is determined never to go back.
"I won't go back. I'd rather be with my wife, my kids and my parents. I want to take care of them," Bannawat said.
"I won't let him," his wife Wichayada added. "Let's stay here together, work together."
She said she never gave up hope of his return.
"Some people said I was still so young, I should go find someone else for a better future. I did not want to do that. I don't think I will meet a good person like Bannawat."
As he adjusts to freedom and family life, Bannawat remains haunted by his experience.
The numbness from where the bullet pierced his hand still wakes him up at night.
"He told me he had a nightmare that he was still detained there," Wichayada said.
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Reporters: and
Photography and video: Yvan Cohen
Additional photos: Reuters and AP
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