“Everyone knew exactly what they had to do”
Saturday. Early in the morning. A holiday. Shimon Elkobi, the manager of MDA Negev region, was at home when the sirens sounded, and he too felt that this was more than just another round of rockets. He instructed the station managers and the call center to move from routine mode to emergency mode and ensured that all ambulances were manned. He put on his uniform and left in the direction of the MDA Station in Be’er Sheva. On the way there, he called military and emergency officials to understand what was happening. Emergency calls were received about shooting casualties in the Ofakim and Netivot areas. and MDA ambulances from the Negev region went to treat the casualties. On the MDA radio in his car, Shimon heard the chilling report by MDA paramedic Danny Shtarkman that his friend EMT and ambulance driver Peter Lesnik had been hit by gunfire near Ofakim while driving an intensive care vehicle. Shimon decided to drive in the direction of Ofakim. At the time, no one knew the extent of the horror unfolding in the south in general, and in the city of Ofakim in particular, where terrorists had infiltrated and were in the midst of a terrible killing spree.
When Shimon arrived at the MDA Station in Ofakim, he saw that all the ambulances at the Station had already been manned by teams that had been called from their homes and had gone to help. Suddenly, a police car arrived, and two policemen quickly got out, holding between them a shot and wounded policeman who was bleeding significantly. Shimon, the region manager, is a paramedic by profession, like most MDA managers. He laid the wounded man down on a stretcher and gave him life-saving treatment. “More and more wounded people started arriving, as well as our teams. We started evacuating them. Four lightly wounded people came from the party in Re’im,” Shimon recalls, “and they told me that there were about 30 wounded people there. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, 30 wounded? That’s a lot’”
MDA teams continued to arrive at the station. Everyone was ready to help with whatever was needed. Among them was Sima, a volunteer driver from Yeruham, and Linoy Weizman. As part of the constant preparedness for emergencies, MDA stations have a stock of medical equipment in case of an emergency, such as an earthquake. This enabled MDA personnel in Ofakim to set up a treatment facility at the Station. They deployed the emergency equipment, set up stations, opened stretchers, assigned roles, and under Shimon’s guidance, made sure that a mobile first aid station from Be’er Sheva arrived in Ofakim.
More and more wounded with varying degrees of injuries arrived in ambulances and private vehicles. Soldiers, policemen and civilians. MDA men and women treated them all feverishly. They stopped wounds from bleeding, bandaged wounds, administered intravenous fluids and sometimes provided more advanced treatments. Unfortunately, the police also brought the bodies of their friends and of civilians and began to gather them in a dignified manner at the Station. Every time an ambulance arrived, wounded people were loaded onto it and evacuated to the hospital in an logical order of priorities. “There was a wounded man who was taken out of the car, a soldier, with a tourniquet on his thigh. His hip was swollen from the loss of blood. He was pale but conscious. I didn’t usually intervene in the treatment, there was no need, but somehow I saw him get out of the car and I said to the team: ‘Come on, put him in an ambulance and rush him to the hospital.’ In retrospect, it turns out that I know the father of that soldier.”
At the same time, MDA ambulances and intensive care vehicles were constantly dispatched to Ofakim and its surroundings to evacuate wounded of varying degrees of severity, and bulletproof ambulances also arrived from all MDA regions for reinforcement. Meanwhile, the manager of the region, who was in charge of the emergency treatment operations, started to hear about MDA staffers who were wounded by the terrorists’ fire. He heard about Aharon Chaimov, may God avenge his blood, who went out and with whom contact was lost; about Avia Hetzroni, may God avenge his blood, who was hit by gunfire in Kibbutz Be’eri and MDA personnel were unable to reach him; and Amit Man, may God avenge her blood, with whom they lost contact at noon.
At some point, Itzik Buzukashvili (known as “Bazuka”) arrived at the Ofakim Station, may God avenge his blood. He was the commander of the Segev Shalom Police Station. With great devotion, he brought to the MDA Station in his own car his friend who had been shot, the commander of the Rahat Station J.R. Davidov, may God avenge his blood. “Unfortunately, the commander of the Rahat Station was already dead,” Shimon says. “I asked Bazuka to identify the bodies of the many police officers who were with us. He went through them, one by one, and told me their names. He knew them all personally. This is a very difficult situation. I wrote down the names and then we closed the body bag of each victim. It was heartbreaking.”
Suddenly, a report arrived that terrorists had been spotted at the entrance to the MDA Station in Ofakim. The teams took the wounded inside and locked themselves in the Station. Bazuka moved to a kneeling position, his weapon pointed at the entrance gate to the Station, ready to protect the MDA teams and the wounded, and I stood beside him. After a while, the threat passed and he straightened up and said to me, ‘Well, I’m going,’ and left. Half an hour later, we received a report that he had been killed when he returned to fight. May his memory be a blessing. A true hero of Israel,” Shimon says sadly. “I was in touch with the mayor because we had a lot of bodies piling up. Police officers came to the Station and asked me for body bags. I gave them of course and asked them to send me more from other stations. When I arrived at the cemetery in Ofakim on Saturday night, there were over 70 bodies there.”
“In this disaster, all MDA men and women mobilized and acted in an astonishing manner, with dedication and commitment,” Shimon says of his staff from the Negev region. “And all this time, their families were in the safe rooms. They acted automatically, without thinking. They were well prepared for the situation. Everyone knew exactly what they had to do. There was no need to say anything more than once. Everyone was fully present – even those who didn’t have a home to return to, even those recruited for emergency call-up, even those who received reports of co-workers being murdered, wounded and kidnapped – they all pitched in to save lives, adapted very quickly to what was happening. As their manager, I greatly appreciate what they did and are doing,” Shimon concluded.
“Since when do you shoot at an ambulance?”
Early in the morning, an intensive care unit team was dispatched from the MDA Station in Ofakim, headed by Ofakim Station manager and paramedic Danny Shtarkman. “Early in the morning, we were rushed to treat five seriously wounded people in the Urim Junction area. The nature of the injuries was not yet clear. On the way to Urim, a car stopped me and a 17-year-old boy with a gunshot wound was handed over to me. I started treating him while trying to figure out the circumstances of the injury. No one knew yet about the terrorists who infiltrated Israel and their killing spree. The people in the car said they were shot at by ‘soldiers.’ At the same time, the call center contacted me and asked if I could continue to reach other seriously wounded casualties. I understood that the young man’s injuries in the ambulance were not life-threatening, so we could go help. As we got closer, we suddenly heard bursts of gunfire. As we tried to figure out where the voices were coming from, the window of the intensive care unit shattered on the driver’s side. I realized that we had been shot at, but at that point I thought it was a mistake, that we were shot accidentally, because since when do you shoot at an ambulance?”
But then the ambulance driver, Peter Lesnik, announced that he had been shot in the leg. Danny treated the wounded and Peter continued to drive even though he had been shot, keeping them away from the terrorists despite his injuries. When they were far enough, Danny put a tourniquet on his friend’s leg, stopped the bleeding, and then drove the intensive care unit to the hospital.
Three days after he was shot, Peter’s first daughter was born – Mi-El, a sister to Ziv. He first met her on his hospital bed. “If it weren’t for Danny’s resourcefulness, I wouldn’t be here today, and my children wouldn’t have a father. The greatest life-saving gift I’ve ever received is the birth of my beloved daughter.”