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Hundreds of Wounded in Beersheba Hospital ER

(Ynet News) Dr. Sapir Bitton - On Oct. 7, I was at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba. My husband, Shaked, and my two small children were at our home in Kibbutz Erez. Shaked phones, asking me to come home, as he needs to rush to the local standby alert squad. I'm on my way to the car when my sister calls. "Don't go out of Soroka, there are terrorists all over the area." I return to the emergency room. Ambulances begin to arrive. The first to come are the victims of the massacre at the music festival. Dozens of young people with gunshot wounds, so young and beautiful, who just a few hours beforehand were celebrating life, and now sitting in front of us, hollow-eyed. At the same time, dozens of injured police officers are pouring into the ER. The "lightly" injured are those suffering gunshot wounds to the extremities. A soldier from a standby alert squad at a kibbutz arrives lying on a stretcher. His body is folded, holding his gun, and he screams when the doctors try to loosen up his body. He doesn't allow them to touch either his body or weapon. He is there in body but not in mind, which is still in the kibbutz. A Bedouin family arrives. A rocket hit their house. One of the family members was killed. I have been at Soroka for years - and I have never seen it like this. Hundreds of wounded, people with holes in their bodies and souls, sooty people in blood-soaked clothes. Helicopters land every few minutes bringing wounded, bleeding soldiers. Meanwhile, as in a parallel universe - Shaked and my two children are besieged in the kibbutz. I saw an incoming call from Or-Yosef Ran, a team commander in an IDF commando unit, my younger sister's ex-partner. I tell him there are terrorists in the kibbutz. He tells me he's at the entrance to the kibbutz, "taking care of them." That was the last conversation I had with someone who would be murdered in a few hours. Our whole family managed to get out of the kibbutz safely. But this story has no happy ending. There is no end. The distress can't be released. There is a terrible, burning, suffocating feeling. The pain is intense. The reality is inconceivable. We, the people who live in the area surrounding Gaza, have become refugees in our own country. Every day we receive another message about a family that was murdered, that was slaughtered. Another funeral.
2023-12-11 00:00:00
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