“It was clear that we’re dropping everything to go help in the south”

On the morning of October 7, Nissim Sassi and Talia Slutsky, both from MDA’s Sharon region, drove south to reinforce MDA teams in the Gaza Envelope.

Nissim recalls: “On Simchat Torah, while I was in synagogue, I received a message telling me to report to the MDA Station in Netanya. I immediately left, took my young son home, and still dressed in my holiday clothes, headed south with my team.

When we reached Ofakim, we received a first call about gunshot wounds. While we were speeding towards the wounded man, a police vehicle stopped us, and three officers from a special police unit got out. They said they had to accompany us for protection because there were gunfights going on nearby. We began treating four victims with varying degrees of injuries from those battles. After performing life-saving procedures, we evacuated them to Soroka Hospital. When we got there, we heard reports on the radio that more and more wounded people needed help, and immediately we went out again into the inferno.

We returned to Ofakim and treated another wounded man, this time a special police unit fighter who was seriously wounded. I saw his fear of death. He smiled gratefully at me. The smile he had on his face will forever be etched in my memory. After evacuating him, we immediately returned to the battlefield, without thinking twice. We drove to Patish Junction, where we came across two people who had been seriously wounded from an RPG shell. After a quick examination and after we stopped their bleeding, I decided, together with the call center, to advance in the direction of an MDA helicopter in order to get them to the hospital as quickly as possible. While we drove towards the helicopter, there were incessant sirens warning of incoming rockets. Within minutes, the helicopter was already in the air and on its way to the hospital.

All this time, my clothes were drenched with the blood of the wounded, and I tried to understand what was going on, but unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to reflect because we immediately went out again to help those fighting so valiantly. We arrived at a place where a fierce battle had taken place that resulted in the wounding of three soldiers whose conditions were serious. They were bleeding non-stop. After I treated them all, I saw that one of the soldiers, who had been hit by a Kalashnikov bullet to his shoulder, was bleeding through the bandage. I decided to stop his bleeding with my hand. I pressed as hard as I could. And, for half an hour, until we arrived at the hospital, my hand was inside his shoulder.

Finally, at 9:00 p.m., when the smell of blood covered my hands, we transferred a wounded man from Soroka Hospital to Meir Hospital. During the evacuation, his mother did not leave him for a moment. She repeatedly thanked God that her son was alive,” Nissim recalls.