Mother’s final phone call with her daughter… before hearing Hamas killers argue over who got to kidnap her: Family release harrowing audio to mark four months since she was abducted in Israel

The heartbroken family of a waitress held in Gaza have released the harrowing tape of her final moments before she was taken, as they mark four months in captivity today.

Romi Gonen, 23, called her mother, Meirav, shortly after the car in which she fled the Oct. 7 Nova Festival massacre was ambushed by terrorists.

She is heard cowering due to heavy gunfire in the footwell of the vehicle as her best friend Gaya Halifa, 24, lies dying in front of her.

During an extremely haunting phone conversation, Meirav, 54, gently tries to comfort her daughter, telling her, “Romichoo, I am with you darling. Everything will be fine.

“We’re going to the hospital – you’ll get better and we’ll travel together wherever you want… I’m with you, my beauty.”

But as terrifying explosions are heard nearby, Romi, who has been shot in the arm and has lost movement in her hand, can only reply: “Hello? Mom?’

Meirav asks for details of the car she is in to get help, but when she gets no answer she simply says, “Romily, you are not alone. You are with me, my beautiful. Everything is alright.’

The two-minute clip is part of an agonizing 45-minute phone call, much of which was too devastating for the family to release.

Moments earlier, they thought Romi had been saved when Gaya’s friend, Ben Shimoni, 31, risked his own life to drive back to the massacre to save them.

The amateur driver is known as the ‘Angel of Nova’ for his heroics that day and the Gonen family says he died ‘giving Romi a second chance’.

Her eldest sister, Yarden, 30, has joined Ben’s grieving girlfriend, Jessica Elter, 27, in demanding that Romi be brought home so Ben’s latest sacrifice won’t be in vain.

The professional chef saved nine people by driving in and out of the festival twice, before returning once more for Gaya, Romi and another man, Ofir Tzarfati, 27.

But after driving past terrorists and picking up the girls from a bush that was later burned to the ground, he was shot and killed as they escaped.

Gaya, who was sitting next to him in the front, was also killed. Ofir was shot, as was Romi when the trained medic reached forward with her right hand to try to take her best friend’s pulse.

Meirav, who had only recently been filled with “pure relief and joy” over her daughter’s miraculous escape, received the devastating phone call at 10.14am.

Deafening gunfire can be heard in the background as Romi tells her, “Mom, we’ve been ambushed.

‘The driver is probably dead. Gaya has been shot and she doesn’t answer. Ofir was shot, and I was shot in the arm.”

She added, “Mama, just so you know, I’m dead if no one comes.”

When the reality set in that this might be the last time she spoke to her daughter, Meirav, a business consultant, decided to record the conversation.

For 45 minutes she stayed on the phone with her daughter, who was huddled in the footwell of the bullet-ridden Cupra Formentor.

“My mother told us that she understood that no one would come,” Yarden, a nurse from Tel Aviv, told the Daily Mail.

“She changed her voice to be much calmer and more loving, and just told her how much she loved her and that everything will be okay.

“She said she wanted her voice to be heard loud and clear, to know that there is hope, that she will fight for her and that she loves her.”

In the heartbreaking final minutes, Meirav Romi, who is rapidly losing blood, is heard promising that they will return to the cafe where they had sat just three days earlier.

“You will tell me everything, and then you will heal,” she says, trying to calm her daughter – as Arabic voices and gunfire grow closer.

But as Meirav listened from her home 150 miles away in northern Israel, terrorists arrived, unlocked the car and debated whether or not to kill her daughter and Ofir.

They are then heard dragging Romi away to Gaza and although Ofir was later tragically confirmed dead, Romi was not heard from for 55 days.

Then, in November, a released hostage finally reported seeing her alive in Gaza – but that brought little relief.

Romi had told them that after the phone went dead, she was pulled by the hair and her injured arm and thrown onto the floor of the terrorists’ car.

She tried to play dead, but when she tried to look up she was hit in the head with the butt of a shotgun, leaving her with a black eye and a crushed back.

“They told us her gunshot wound to her arm was not properly treated,” Yarden said. ‘Her hand doesn’t work. Her fingers barely move and change color – and that was 10 weeks ago

All Yarden wants is for her smart, smiling, “crazy” party sister to come home.

“Sometimes I feel the pain so powerfully, like I’m exploding from within,” she said. “I really miss her.”