They exchanged text messages and emojis. Brief status updates with words of encouragement. A picture of the beloved family dog "Tutsi."
Until no more messages came.
And then, Cindy Flash, an American, and her Israeli husband Igal vanished into the violence, presumed kidnapped by Hamas.
Four days after Hamas attacked Israel, more than 100 Israelis and potentially dozens of foreign nationals are thought to be held captive in the Gaza Strip. At least 14 U.S. citizens have been killed and an unknown number are still unaccounted for.
Flash, 67, originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, is one of them. She lives in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel near Gaza, where some of the most harrowing and grisly stories have been emerging during the last few days.
"They are breaking down the safe room door," Flash said in one of her final messages to her daughter Keren, 34. "We need someone to come by the house right now." She had been communicating with her parents from a few houses away.
And their daughter said that despite their proximity to Gaza, everyone in the family had always felt secure and reveled in their area's lush vegetation, tranquility and sense of community.
In fact, the extended Flash family had expected a very different Saturday than the one they got.
They had planned a family picnic. And later that afternoon they were going to make and fly kites in the local soccer field as part of an annual community event. Maybe, they thought, they'd eat a little ice cream. Try to relax after a hectic week of family life and work. A DJ was going to play.
Instead, Keren, a pilates instructor, and her husband Avidor Schwartzman, 37, a media consultant, woke abruptly around 6:30 a.m. to a blaring Kibbutz alarm system and heard what appeared to be the sound of bombs going off. They lept out of bed and dashed down the hall to grab their one-year-old baby, Saar − as well as her bottle, diapers, water, a little food. Then, they locked themselves in a room of concrete and reinforced steel.
Around the same time, Cynthia and Igal, 66, locked themselves in their own safe room and the sounds of bombs gradually turned into the sounds of automatic gun fire as Hamas encircled Kfar Aza and began going house to house to hunt down its residents.
Neither the U.S. nor Israeli authorities had been able to provide them with any information about where her parents might be, Keren said.
But she had not lost hope they would be found.
"Any time someone calls us, any authority from the kibbutz or anywhere, our hearts sink down and then they say 'we don't have any new information.'"
Shaylee Atary, 34, another Kfar Aza resident, spent several days coming to terms with this feeling as well.
She last saw her husband Yahav Winner, 37, on Saturday as he barricaded a window of their home to allow time for Shaylee and their one-month old daughter Shaya to flee their home.
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