A 16-year-old Israeli-American boy who survived a Hamas attack when his mother shielded him from the terrorists’ bullets with her own body revealed how he played dead for hours under a blood-soaked cloth, just steps from his parents. parents massacred.
As he sat in a hospital bed in Be’er Sheva, surrounded by his surviving relatives, a visibly shaken Rotem Mathias told ABC News correspondent James Longman how gunmen opened fire in his family’s home in a kibbutz in southern Israel early Saturday morning.
The teenager helped his parents, Shlomi Mathias and Deborah Shahar Troen Mathias, block the door with mattresses and furniture, but it was not enough to stop the armed intruders.
“The terrorists shot the door open,” Mathias said during the interview, which aired Wednesday on “Good Morning America.” “They threw a grenade or something that exploded. The last thing my dad said was that he lost his arm and then my mom died on top of me.”
The boy who had just witnessed the murder of his parents in cold blood was later able to crawl out from under his mother’s body and hide under a bloody blanket for several hours while the terrorists searched his house for survivors to finish him off.
A shocked 16-year-old Rotem Mathias (right) told in heartbreaking detail how he played dead under a bloody blanket after Hamas terrorists murdered his parents. ABC Rotem (right) survived after his mother (center) protected him from the terrorists’ bullets with her body. Instagram/Debbie Shahar
“I just stopped my breathing, slowed it down as much as I could,” Mathias told ABC News. “I didn’t move. He was terrified. I didn’t make any noise. And I prayed for whatever god, I didn’t really care what god, I just prayed for a god so they wouldn’t find me.”
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While hiding, the boy sent a message to a family text chain that read: “Parents [sic] dead. I’m sorry.”
When his shocked and distraught relatives pressed him for more details, Mathias responded that he had been shot and was in pain.
His father, Dad Shlomi Mathias, screamed that he had lost an arm before he was killed, his son recalled. Facebook / Debbie Shahar Rotem (center) was able to send text messages to members of her family to tell them that her parents had been murdered.Facebook / Debbie Shahar
The terrorists subsequently set fire to Mathias’s house, forcing him to flee for his life.
He was eventually rescued by Israeli soldiers and taken to a hospital to be treated for his injuries.
The worst attack on Israel in 50 years: how we got here
2005: Israel unilaterally withdraws from the Gaza Strip more than three decades after seizing the territory from Egypt in the Six-Day War.
2006: The terrorist group Hamas wins the Palestinian legislative elections.
2007: Hamas takes control of Gaza in a civil war.
2008: Israel launches a military offensive against Gaza after Palestinian terrorists fire rockets at the city of Sderot.
2023: Hamas launches largest attack on Israel in 50 years.
More than 1,200 Israelis have been killed, more than 3,000 wounded and at least 100 taken hostage, with the death toll expected to rise after Hamas terrorists fired thousands of rockets and sent dozens of militants into Israeli cities. .
Hamas terrorists were seen taking women hostage and parading them down the street in gruesome videos.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced “We are at war” and promised that Hamas would pay “a price it has never known.”
Gaza health officials report that at least 1,050 Palestinians have been killed and more than 5,000 injured.
Mathias’ older sister also survived the attack by barricading herself inside a safe room in the house.
Mathias’ maternal grandfather, retired Brandeis University professor Ilan Troen, previously told CNN that he was on the phone with his daughter when she was hit by gunfire while protecting her son.
Troen said the teen suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen but survived.
Mom Debbie’s father, retired Brandeis University professor Ilan Troen (center), said he was on the phone with his daughter when she was killed. Facebook/Debbie Shahar
“We were on the phone all day with our grandson, Rotem, while he first lay under her body and then found a place to escape under a blanket in a laundromat,” Troen said from Be’re Sheva, where he has been. taking care of his now orphaned grandchildren.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn