“For many hours we just saved lives”

Ofir Tor, an MDA emergency medicine technician, was on his way to the Sderot Station early that Saturday morning. When he was a few hundred yards away, he saw a squad of terrorists shooting at a vehicle driving in front of him. “I opened the window to hear if there was a ‘Red Alert’ siren and then I heard gunfire – the sound of weapons. I looked ahead and saw someone wearing a hat and a policeman’s uniform. At first, I didn’t understand. I saw him shooting at a white vehicle that was right in front of me, and suddenly he noticed my car, pointed his weapon at me and fired,” Ofir recalls.

“I jumped out of the car. The terrorists were in the roundabout, and I was at the crosswalk just before the entrance to the roundabout. The terrorists started coming toward me and I realized I had no choice – I didn’t have weapons, I had to run away. The terrorists, who saw that I was running away, started following me, and at the same time one of them fired in my direction and hit the car between us. I was sure he’d hit me in the back and I said to myself: ‘You’ll get hit in a minute.’ I ran up a path, about 25 yards, looked back and they were gone. I realized that I had to call in forces and report what’s happening. During the escape, I saw a car with a woman and child in it, I signaled them to follow me and not continue in the direction of the roundabout, and luckily, they listened to me and their lives were saved. I decided that I had to go back to my car to get my phone, and I sneaked back carefully so they wouldn’t notice me, while the terrorists continued further up the avenue.

When I got back to the car, I saw a terrifying sight: a car that was completely shot and the two people sitting inside it were shot and showed no signs of life. The doors of all the cars were open – the terrorists had opened them to make sure everyone was dead. I kept looking around to make sure the terrorists weren’t there. I got back into my car and took out my MDA uniform, because I was afraid that if there were any of our forces in the area, they would think I was a terrorist.

I started creeping towards the Station, and on the way I saw another atrocity: inside the car in front of me were three bodies that had been hit by dozens of bullets. At the bus stop, there was a minibus that had been shot all over, and about ten elderly people who had been shot, none of them alive. All that went through my mind during those moments in the roundabout was how to treat them, but the injuries were so bad that there was no one left to save. It was terrifying. I tried to check for a pulse and there was nothing. There was no one to help. They killed everyone, they murdered everyone who passed by—they slaughtered innocent people.

I managed to get into the city’s MDA Station. I told them there were terrorists in the city. Then a wounded man arrived in very serious condition. We began treating him, and then many more wounded people arrived. The paramedics took over. We divided the rooms according to the urgency of the treatment, and for many hours we simply saved lives… That cursed Saturday, the station turned into a real clinic, a field hospital.”