“Mom, I’m Daria, they murdered dad”: the girl who hid with her little brother and survived the Hamas attack in Israel

They were the 8:16 a.m. Saturday. Less than two hours ago, the rockets launched from Gaza had begun to fall in Israel. “There is an intense shooting in the kibbutz,” he wrote. Dvir Karp to his ex-wife, Reut. The man was accompanied by his two children, Daria and Lavie, who had gone to visit him at his home in Re’im. Less than ten minutes laterhis 10 year old daughter picked up the phone and wrote a devastating message: “Mom, it’s Daria, dad was murdered.”

What came next was a long sequence shot almost straight out of Roadthe postapocalyptic novel by Cormac McCarthy that John Hillcoat made into a film, in which a father helps his son survive in a world devastated by a cataclysm of unknown origin. The difference is that this story was starred, from a distance, mother and daughter. And zombies are Hamas terrorists.

Daria and her brother Lavie They hid in the shelter bed to whom, minutes earlier, they had run when the shots became louder and closer. His father, Dvir, and his girlfriend, Stav, took them.

As his only survival equipment, the man held on to an ax and a knife. “In case something happens,” was the only explanation he gave to the younger ones.

It was early in the morning. The girl fell asleep. When she opened her eyes again she was met with a nightmarish image. “I saw daddy grab the ax and the knife. They opened the door and ran to confront the terrorists. they shot him my father and I never saw his girlfriend again,” the young woman told Israeli TV.

“Everything happened before my eyes”, added the girl. “When they left I sent him a message to mom“.

It was already 8:24 in a new world.

“Mom, I’m Daria, They killed dad. Also to Stav. Help“, wrote.

Reut—a financial advisor, with experience in large banks and now in the public sector—was desperate in his home in Yehud, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Some 80 kilometers southtwo of his three children were trying to hide. “Next to the bodies”as the mother said, who still couldn’t believe it.

They had reached his phone numerous messages since the launch of the Hamas operation that hit southern Israel. “A shooting? Inside the kibutz?” Was his reaction when his ex-partner told him that she was in the shelter.

“Yes, that’s what it sounds like,” he replied. They were the last words they exchanged.

Two minutes later, at 8:18, the woman sent him three more messages commenting on the situation of other family members. But he never responded.

Communication was reactivated at 8:24, with the girl already in control of the phone. “Mom, it’s Daria, dad was killed. Stav, too. Help“he wrote to his mother.

Daria remained with Lavie in the shelter, both covered with a blanket that he threw at them one of the attackers. On a wall, the terrorists left a graffiti painted with a lipstick. “The people of Al-Qassam does not kill small children“, they wrote with the signature of the armed wing of Hamas.

Of that, Reut found out much later. At that moment, mid-morning, what mattered was calming and helping his children, alone in the middle of a terrorist attack in southern Israel.

“From that moment on I remained online with her for three hours. It was a conversation like Holocaust“, the woman told Israeli Channel 12.

In the audio they interspersed small dialogues and long passages in which only his breathing could be heard.

“You can go get water,” Reut suggested.

—Yes, but the door is open.

“Try it,” he motivated the girl.

-Can’t, I would have to see all the corpses —was Daria’s forceful response.

—Don’t see the corpses, don’t see them.

The horror was not only the corpses of his father and his girlfriend. The possibility that the terrorists continued to lurk in the area was latent.

-Mother, there is someone here, there is someone here —the 10-year-old girl suddenly warned.

—Mommy is here. Mommy is here. “Someone is coming soon,” Reut answered, and asked him to remain silent.

“Was the worst saturday of my life. She was scared, she was afraid of never seeing my mom again. I thought I was not going to see anyone again“he reflected later, in front of the cameras, the girl.

Throughout the call, Daria insisted: “When are they going to come get me? I can’t take it anymore.” In her deep but deaf despair, the mother suggested patience. But her daughter’s panic did not subside.

—Mom, I’m afraid to die.

—You’re not going to die, I am always with you.

To Daria and Lavie They were saved by Golan Septon, a neighbor of the kibbutz. “His guardian angel”, as Reut defined it. “He came with a gun and I risked his life for the safety of my children,” she said.

Golan took them to a safe place and, along with his wife, was with them nine hours.

Finally, on Sunday Reut was able meet again with his kids. She shared the moment on your Facebook account.

You see her running until the entrance to a housing complex, where a white car was waiting, parked backwards.

In the back seat were Daria and Laviein addition to Reut’s mother, who had also been locked up in her house for 24 hours.

Karp, from 46 years old, he was a chefspecialist in the making of chocolate. He had his own cafe in Naveh, four kilometers east of the Egyptian border and 10 kilometers south of the Gaza Strip.

He had set up his business about 8 years ago.

“A true hero. In the face of terror“He bravely defended his children,” representatives of the Jewish community recalled.

He was one of the more than a thousand victims of the terrorist attacks in Israel. The area where she lived was left with destroyed roads, full of remains of charred cars and destroyed.

In the residential area, furthermore, the terrorists They set fire to houses with their occupants inside.