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Militants killed some 1,400 people in Israel [7 October] and took 240 hostages into Gaza, according to Israeli authorities. Among those killed or kidnapped were more than 50 citizens of Thailand — 34 killed and 24 taken hostage, Thailand's ambassador to the U.S., Tanee Sangrat, confirmed to NPR Wednesday. Nineteen more Thais were injured in the attacks.

Many hailed from the same impoverished region of northeastern Thailand that Namsan comes from. Thais make up the largest group of foreign nationals working in Israel, mostly employed doing unskilled labor in the country's farms...

Among those Hamas killed were several Thai farmhands who worked north of him. Namsan didn't know them well, but says they'd played a few pickup games of soccer together. The news shocked him...

Namsan wonders if and when he'll be able to return to Israel. "I want to go back. In Isaan I can't make any money," he says, using the Thai name for the northeastern region where he lives. Rice and sugar-cane cultivation dominate the heavily agricultural area, where the average monthly income per household reported in 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, amounted to less than $600...

Julie Fox, a researcher for Hostage Family Forum, an Israeli nonprofit which advocates for Hamas abductees, says that while the fate of Israeli hostages captured on Oct. 7 dominates the international media, the 24 Thais — as well as Nepalis, a Filipino and a Tanzanian who are believed to have been kidnapped in the attacks — have received much less attention. Nepali agricultural students were also reportedly killed Oct. 7, as were at least two Filipinos...

Using Facebook and other means, Fox has been trying to track down and inform families in Thailand to let them know of loved ones who are either missing or dead.

"It's taken a very long time for anyone from the [Thai] government to be in touch," Fox says. "I'm often the first person to speak to them, and I'm not an official at all. I'm a volunteer."

Kurlander also asserts that "the Thai government is working very, very slowly, letting the families know."...

Israeli officials are already eyeing options for filling the gap left by the Thai laborers who've departed, as well as thousands of Palestinian workers expelled by Israel since the Hamas attack. A just-signed bilateral agreement with Sri Lanka opens the door to hiring 10,000 farm laborers from that country. But even before the Hamas attack, in May, a similar deal was inked with India to import some 42,000 Indian laborers to replace Palestinians in the construction industry.