“Terrorists are trying to enter my house.” Terror gripped Ayelet Hachim this Saturday as she told Channel 12 the moments after the Gaza attack at dawn. “I hear their voices and they knock on the door. I am with my two small children,” Hachim said from her home in Be’eri, near the Gaza Strip. It is one of the testimonies that have been collected in the international press, which echoed early in the morning of the ‘Al Aqsa Storm operation’ launched by land, sea and air by the Al Qasam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.
A shower of 5,000 rockets surprised Israeli citizens who were trapped in their homes, in cities and towns in the south of the country, at the mercy of armed Palestinian militant commandos who shot indiscriminately at the civilian population.
The citizens of the area themselves called the media to explain their situation, hiding in their homes or in shelters. “I’ve been in the shelter for more than two hours with my one-week-old baby, while my house is burning,” a resident told Channel 13.
Other images that have spread like wildfire on social media are those of attendees at a music festival held in the middle of the desert, who were surprised by Palestinian militiamen who launched a ground incursion into southern Israel. “They came from all directions, it was a battlefield,” a witness told the newspaper ‘Haaretz’. Videos show hundreds of people fleeing in terror across the countryside, running or driving. Relatives of attendees are desperately trying to locate them by sharing their photos on social media.
One of the attendees, Liron Ohion, who was at the party, was trapped in a burned area: “Me and three other girls have been hiding in a burned area for hours. Anyone who can get in touch, please rescue us.”
The number of dead Israelis increases by the hour and already exceeds one hundred. At the moment the number of hostages that the Hamas militias have taken is unknown but it could be dozens. A resident named Yoni reported on the media ‘Ynet’ the possible kidnapping of his mother-in-law, his wife and his daughters. “The terrorists broke into the house,” says this Sharon resident whose wife was with her three- and five-year-old daughters visiting their mother: “The phone trace I did for my wife shows that the phone appears in Khan Yunis (Gaza). “I’m afraid she, our two daughters and my mother-in-law are there. None of them have responded for five hours.”
The BBC reported another testimony from a citizen shared on Facebook: “We have been told to close the doors, not to leave the safe room. We have not even turned on the air conditioning for fear that it would indicate the presence of people in the house. “My stomach turns. I hear a lot of gunshots, despite the thick walls of the safe room. I need to go to the bathroom, but I don’t dare. I’ve never been so scared.”
Other citizens denounced the lack of presence of the army: “We are locked in our shelter, the army is not here. My husband is with the preparation squad fighting outside. They shoot at us in our houses, they try to enter them,” Ofir said from Sufa. .
