The images of bloodied corpses lying in the streets of Sderot, a city in southern Israel, show the full extent of the shock caused by Hamas’ surprise attack on the country on Saturday, which was unprecedented in its audacity and scale.
A Portal photographer at the scene saw scores of bullet-riddled bodies and vehicles in this southern Israeli city, where the army continued to face armed Palestinians 12 hours after the offensive began. “I went out, I saw piles of corpses of terrorists, civilians, cars being shot at with machine guns. A sea of corpses, along the road in Sderot, tons of corpses in other places,” said a Sderot resident named Shlomi.
By nightfall, the toll reported by Israeli media was more than 100 dead and a thousand injured, while fighting continued to be reported in at least twenty locations near the Gaza Strip. Deaths, hostage-taking, stories of terrorized survivors, all together make this day of October 7th a great trauma in the history of the Jewish state, 50 years and one day after the start of the Israeli-Arab war of 1973, often nicknamed: Yom Kippur -War. These attacks are the deadliest against Israeli civilians since the suicide bombings of the Second Intifada in the heart of Israeli cities some twenty years ago.
“Suddenly, out of nowhere, they started shooting.”
Near the Reim kibbutz, young Israelis attending a rave party with several hundred people fled down a road and across fields as Hamas fighters arrived. “The music stopped and a missile warning siren sounded,” a woman named Ortal told television station N12. “Suddenly, out of nowhere, they started shooting.”
Another participant, Esther Borochov, said a car crashed into her vehicle as she tried to escape. A young man then offered to get into his car before he was shot. She pretended to be dead before being rescued by soldiers.
“My father was kidnapped”
Israeli emergency services said their teams were unable to evacuate the wounded in cities where fighting continued. An ambulance was also attacked and a paramedic was killed, they added.
Israeli television channels broadcast phone calls from frightened residents saying gunmen were trying to break into their bomb shelters. A woman identified as Ella, who was barricaded for several hours in a shelter at Kibbutz Be’eri, where about fifty Israelis were reportedly taken hostage, testified on channel N12. “We heard a lot of gunshots, we were told that the terrorists were in the dining room,” she said. “I lost contact with my family. I know that my father was kidnapped (…). Nobody tells us what’s happening. I don’t know if my mother is still alive.”