Hamas’s assault on southern Israel began with a barrage of rockets, sending scores of people into roadside refuges. Then gunmen came to hunt them.
Nearly 30 young people took refuge inside a grimy bunker on the morning of Oct. 7, hoping the reinforced-concrete shelter near the border with Gaza would fulfill its promise of protection.
But just after 7:40 a.m., when a group of Hamas assailants, armed with assault rifles and grenades, attacked the shelter near Kibbutz Re’im in southern Israel, the very characteristics that made the tiny fortress a refuge from incoming rockets turned it into a deathtrap for those inside.
In less than an hour, after a desperate defense that included throwing live grenades back at their attackers, more than a dozen of the shelter’s occupants had been killed, their bodies blown apart and riddled with bullets. Others, dazed and injured, were taken to Gaza as hostages.
