Gadi Haggai, a 73-year-old man taken hostage in the Hamas-led invasion of Israel, is now believed to have died in the Oct. 7 attack, the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum said in a statement on Friday.
It said his body was still being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The forum said Mr. Haggai and his wife, Judi Weinstein, both citizens of both Israel and the United States, were shot during the Hamas terror attack while they were on their regular morning walk in the fields and vineyards of Kibbutz Nir Oz.
Ms. Haggai contacted friends to tell them they had been shot and that her husband was critically injured, the forum said. It said that was the last time anyone in Israel heard from them. Ms. Haggai is still being held captive. Her condition is unknown.
“Gadi was a man full of humor who knew how to make those around him laugh,” Liat Bell Sommer, a spokeswoman for the forum, said in a statement, adding that Mr. Haggai was “a musician at heart, a gifted flutist.”
The forum did not specify how it knew that Mr. Haggai died during the attack.
As Israel has investigated the Oct. 7 attack, it has learned more about the fate of those who went missing. Earlier this month, Israeli authorities said Eitan Levy, a 53-year-old man originally thought to have been taken hostage, had actually been killed in the Oct. 7 attack.
Hamas and other Palestinian groups killed roughly 1,200 people and abducted some 240 others during the Oct. 7 attack, Israeli authorities say. It was the deadliest attack in the country’s history.
In addition to murder and kidnapping, some attackers committed other atrocities, including rape and mutilation of their victims, Israel has said.
