Deadly attacks continue between Hamas and Israel. Meanwhile, an Israeli-American teenager survived a siege on his home by Hamas attackers over the weekend. His parents saved him from the bullets during the attack but they died in the incident.
The family lived on a kibbutz in southern Israel near the border with Gaza. They had less than a minute to seek safety after receiving a warning of an attack.
As fighters attacked their home, they ducked into a small room built to protect them from rocket attacks. Relatives said Shlomi Mathias' hand was cut while trying to keep the fighters out of the room.
As the fighters opened fire into the room, Debbie Mathias told her son Rotem to get down, then he was shot and killed; The bullet passed through him and hit him in the stomach.
Rotem Mathias narrated his ordeal
Relatives told The Associated Press that 16-year-old Rotem Mathias remained pinned under his mother and lay dead for about 30 minutes, then fled to seek shelter under a bed and eventually under a blanket in an adjacent laundry room. hid under.
Twice, Rotem Mathias managed to escape from the fighters, some of whom were laughing.
"The last thing my dad said was that he lost his arm," Rotem Mathias told ABC News in an interview from the hospital. He was being treated for gunshot and shrapnel wounds in the hospital. Mathias further said that then my mother died on top of me.
I was very scared and praying- Rotem
“I just held my breath,” he said. I got it down as much as I could. I didn't move and I was so scared. I didn't make any noise. I prayed to God. I just prayed to God that they wouldn't find me.
The family's ordeal came to light in a group chat on Saturday morning, which began with Sandesh saying they heard voices in Arabic, glass breaking, and gunshots.
For the next 10 hours, relatives, including Deborah Mathias' brother-in-law Eran Shani, his wife, and daughters supported Rotem. They were asking Rotem Mathias about his bleeding levels and called for a doctor to join the call to assess his condition.
Shani told the AP that his wife, a psychiatrist, tried to calm Rotem for several hours before the soldiers arrived. He was bleeding. He accepted defeat. They didn't know whether he would survive or not.
Meanwhile, Mathias's other two daughters, 21-year-old Shir, and 19-year-old Shaked, were hiding separately in their safe room in the kibbutz, just minutes from their parents. He received a message from his mother that fighters were in the kibbutz and that he "should not open the door."
All we could hear were gunshots and people screaming.
“All we could hear was gunshots and people screaming and the sounds of bombs going off, cars exploding,” Shir Mathias said. He recalled how the two sisters were in hiding for more than 12 hours before they were rescued by soldiers.
It's like if you close your eyes, you can think you're in a movie theater, he told the AP. Then you open your eyes and you realize: I'm in my room. I am in my house. This is the truth.
We could hear missiles flying below. We could hear them whistling and exploding. it was crazy. I had never heard of anything like it, it was so scary. As darkness fell, Shaken Mathias set out in search of his sister.
"I packed a bag as quietly as I could and I ran over to my sister's apartment and I knocked on her door," said Matthias, shaken. He thought I was a terrorist. I called his name and then he opened the door. After which we both were together and the first thing I asked him was, do you think... mom and dad are dead? Do you think our brother is okay?
He was almost captured by Hamas fighters, who knocked down his door and shone a torch inside. After the fighters left, Shir Mathias began calling people she could reach before contacting a soldier who came to her home.
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