Friends’ dramatic escape after Hamas gunmen attack party on beach | UK News

Bar workers have told of how they made a dramatic escape under heavy fire after Hamas terrorists packed in small boats attacked a scenic beach where they were camped out for a party.  

One reveller told of how he and a friend drove at high speed through an ambush sprung by the gunmen who apparently landed on Zikim beach in the first hours of the unprecedented mass incursion. 

Ariel Ein-Gal said his group had made a ‘miraculous’ escape under sustained gun and rocket fire early on Saturday morning before discovering that the terrorists had killed one of his friends, Mor Gabbay.  

Ariel, 26, had been among around 20 young people who were camped on the sands after an end-of-season party for the Mileva bar, located in his home city of Be’er Sheva, around a 76km drive to the south-east.

The bartender and a friend told how the gunmen murdered policemen and took over their patrol cars before shooting at them from multiple directions as they tried to escape further into Israel in three vehicles.

One of the group, all aged between 24 and 28, needed surgery for a bullet wound to his leg.

Ariel told Metro.co.uk: ‘We all work at a pub in Be’er Sheva and we went to Zikim to celebrate staff leaving and the New Year. Around 6am we woke up to sounds of loud bangs and sirens.  

‘We had made a camp between two containers so we ran there and hid for around 20 minutes.  

‘Then I saw rubber boats from the coast filled with Hamas fighters, there were three rubber boats with between six and eight men in each of them.

‘The IDF [Israeli Defence Force] started shooting at them, and the terrorists started shooting at us, so I screamed at everyone on the beach to run.’ 

The group first ran towards their cars, but after realising the gunmen had infiltrated the area they decided to seek shelter at a nearby military base.

They were allowed to take cover in a missile-proof outbuilding just inside the perimeter after pleading with guards — who are under instructions to be wary of infiltrators in civilian clothing — to be allowed inside.

‘The sound of the bullets got closer with every minute that passed and we realised that the terrorists were inside the base shooting,’ Ariel said.

‘The base was also getting bombed from Gaza, so we didn’t know if we were going to die from missiles or die from shooting, or get kidnapped.

‘It was scary. There were 15 girls with us who were screaming and in panic. The base was almost empty and there was only one soldier guarding us, an 18-year-old girl who wasn’t supposed to be there.

‘I used to be a military combat commander so I took her M16 rifle to guard everyone.’ 

After around an hour, the group decided to make a break in two cars and a SUV but they encountered a trap set by the militants on a long stretch of road that heads from the beach towards Zimi town.

‘A couple of terrorists had killed police officers and taken two patrol cars which they used in the ambush,’ Ariel said. ‘We were driving at 130kph and I told my friend to slow down for the police so they would not shoot us. They would have treated it as suspicious to see us driving at them so fast.

‘When we got closer we saw what we thought was a dead body in one of the cars and when we got closer still, within 20 to 30 metres, the dead body woke up and started shooting at us.

‘At the same time his friends in the bushes started shooting at us too.’ 

A friend of Ariel’s in the car received a bullet wound to her hand but they managed to escape otherwise unscathed as they made it to ambulances lying further east.  

Another 10 people in the group of friends were warned by those who had driven out that the gunmen had sprung an ambush, so they returned to the military base.  

Mor, who was a cook at the bar, had decided to drive back to her parents’ home in Be’er Sheva around 10 minutes before the first sounds of explosions, Ariel told Metro.co.uk 

Her friends found the 30-year-old’s empty car riddled with bullet holes in the middle of the road before it emerged that her body had been taken by a police officer who was first on the scene.  

Ahiad Ben-Yitzchak, a cook at the bar, was shot in the left bicep as he fled in another of the three vehicles.

He was also woken by the explosions, which he at first thought were being played over speakers in a practical joke pulled by people who had stayed awake.  

Ahiad described how close the gunmen came to the group on the beach, which has a fortified sea barrier supposed to guard against amphibious attacks.  

‘We started to hear bullets whistling around us,’ he said.

‘It was unmistakable, we have experienced it in the army and we even recognised it from the movies. We looked west and saw rubber boats with people shooting at us from inside Israeli territory. It was surreal. They weren’t stray bullets, they were directly at us, they were popping glass bottles and on the sand around us.’  

Ahiad, 29, also took shelter in the base amid the sound of explosions and gunfire.

‘Although we were in the base I felt that every minute was bringing us closer to death,’ he said.  

‘The gunfire was 20 or 30 metres away, it was very close and there was nowhere to run. 

‘We debated whether to stay or go, and in the end we ran.’ 

Ahiad, who is also from Be’er Sheva, and his group of four made it to one of the vehicles and drove between one or two kilometres from the base before seeing the police cars around 800 metres ahead on the eastern highway, which is surrounded by fields in the Negev desert.

‘The shooting started from everywhere,’ he said.  

‘We shouted to the driver “just drive, take us out of here”. It was just chaos.  

‘We could hear the bullets hitting the car, it was terrifying. A bullet struck my leg but it didn’t hurt, it felt like an electric current had gone through my body.’ 

The car then broke down as oil spilled out and Ahiad’s group ran into a nearby field used to grow flowers, where they took cover in bushes. He described how, as his clothes began to stain red with blood, his friends spotted armoured vehicles on the road and managed to make their way over, where they were met by members of the IDF’s elite Maglan commando unit.

The mechanical engineering student was given first aid by the troops before his group was taken to safety. He later needed treatment to remove the round from his leg, which he believes was from a sniper rifle. 

Ariel said the friends were extremely fortunate to have survived the early phases of an incursion which formed part of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s multi-pronged assault on southern Israel. 

The human toll of the calculated and carefully-planned attack is still becoming evident with at least 260 people believed to have been killed by the terrorists at the nova music festival. 

‘I don’t know if it was divine intervention but I feel extremely fortunate to have survived,’ Ariel said.  

‘If you asked us to do the same thing again 100 times I’m telling you I would be dead every time.

‘There are so many points where you can say that we had a miraculous escape.’  

While it’s not been confirmed how Hamas managed to enter the area, the UK-proscribed terror group released a video purportedly showing a group of fighters launching a speedboat before the footage cuts to pictures of dead bodies lying in toilet cubicles.  

Fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns can be seen in the unverified clip before it cuts to a car speeding along a highway.

The IDF said on Sunday that it had killed five terrorists who were hiding in the Zikim beach area, preventing them from infiltrating further inland.

The Israeli Air Force separately said that one of its aircraft had destroyed a ‘terrorist cell’ that had tried to enter the country via the route.

Ariel said: ‘The car I was in was driven by a Bedouin friend who works in the pub and another friend, who is also Bedouin, was with us. It shows that Hamas don’t care, Jewish or Muslim, they want to kill everyone.

‘My Bedouin friend is a hero, he saved my life, he didn’t stop when I told him to at the police car.

‘They are with us shoulder to shoulder.

‘We want the world to know what our group of friends has been through, so people know the difference between peaceful Israelis, Jewish and Muslim, and Hamas.’ 

The IDF said today that at least 1,200 Israelis are dead and more than 2,700 have been wounded since the attack was launched. At least 1,055 Palestinians have been killed and 5,184 wounded as a result of Israeli air strikes, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Jerusalem is expected to launch a ground assault into the Palestinian territory after imposing a blockade on supplies of food, fuel and medicines.  

MORE : Israel-Hamas war live: Gaza in darkness with hospitals on brink of collapse as fuel runs out

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