On Saturday, October 7, at 06:30 A.M., Major G was in the synagogue in the community where he lives near Sderot. "There was a red color in the sequence, I understand something is happening and I hear gunshots," he says.
"I ran home, got in the car and drove to Sderot. On the way, I met the district commander (Southern District Commander Maj. Gen. Amir Cohen). We decided to go to the police station. We didn't know at that moment what we were going for. The token only fell when we arrived and I identified two vans with machine guns, police officers and dead civilians."
"What happened to this city is simply a disaster": Sderot on the second day of the attack // Shmuel Buchris
G. is a member of the police SWAT unit, which has a worldwide reputation as a leader in the field of fighting terrorism. They are trained to deal professionally and at any given moment with a wide range of threats, and are considered experts in fighting under fire against terrorists. They were among the first to encounter terrorists who took over the Sderot police station.
Now, after losing nine of their comrades, the fighters are describing for the first time, candidly, the initial moments of surprise, coming to their senses, breaking in and rescuing the hostages (including a senior police officer with the rank of commander),
as the minutes passed and the fog began to settle, and when it became clear that Hamas' Nukhba terrorists were already at the Sderot police station after killing police officers and civilians.
IDF forces outside the Sderot police station, photo: AP
The unit's fighters were required to show extraordinary daring in order to rescue policemen, some of them wounded, who were held hostage on the roof and first floor of the station. The terrorists who infiltrated the station were trained and armed from head to toe, and enjoyed an operational advantage. Apart from booby-trapping the station and firing heavily at anyone who tried to approach the station, one of them was stationed as a sniper on the roof of the station and shot indiscriminately at anyone who tried to approach.
Elimination from the services
G. understood that the way to break in required the elimination of the sniper on the roof. At the time, however, he was still dressed in civilian clothes, armed with a "jumper" pistol, as opposed to the weapons in the terrorists' possession. "During a fight, a policeman who was with me took a bullet and fell," he says. "I pulled him into a shelter while at the same time the sniper continued to shoot and made sure that wounded police officers who tried to escape were killed."
Destroying the Sderot police station (archive), photo: Shmuel Buchris
The skilled policeman was looking for a long weapon to hit the sniper – but there was none nearby. "Suddenly, a soldier ran up to me," he says. "I told him, 'Listen, there's a sniper-terrorist on the roof, I'm taking your rifle,' but he adamantly refused. I managed to get him a magazine with bullets, and at a certain moment, when he took off his weapon and put it down to arrange his clothes, I stole his rifle and ran toward the police building."
The soldier, who did not know he was a SWAT fighter, began shouting, "He stole my weapon, he stole my weapon," but a policeman who recognized G. ordered not to open fire against him, clarifying, "He is from our forces." "I ran to one of the buildings overlooking the station, went up to one of the higher floors, knocked on the door and shouted 'SWAT, SWAT,' and an elderly man opened it," G. says.
"When I saw the sniper raising his head, I fired a bullet at him," Officer G., Photo: Yossi Zeliger
"I told him there was a sniper on the roof of the police station who needed to be dealt with. I went into the bathroom, got on the toilet, took the glass out of the window and asked him for a knife and cut a small hole in the net. When I saw the sniper raising his head to shoot at the shopping center, I fired a bullet at him. A few seconds later, I noticed another terrorist trying to throw a grenade at police officers and he was also killed."
A battle that lasted 28 hours
In the terrorists' takeover of the police station and in battles with them, eight policemen were killed, including Alexei Shmakalov – a SWAT soldier. In the first moments, the fear was for the lives of three policemen and a soldier who were taken hostage at the station. One of them was the commander of the Negev region of the Border Police, Commander Tomer Eldar.
Deputy Superintendent Tomer Eldar, Photo: Dudu Greenspan
"They hid in one of the rooms, and during the fighting we held talks with the security officer who described to us where they were shooting from and where he thought the terrorists might be found. There was no contact with the terrorists, it was clear that they had come to conquer, barricade themselves and fight. There was no attempt on their part to negotiate," says Superintendent T, a SWAT unit commander who and his fighters participated in breaking into the station. The rescue of the hostages took only seven minutes, but the fighting until the complete elimination of the terrorists was slow and measured in order to keep the fighters as safe as possible. "We wanted to end this event face to face," adds Maj. R. "The IEDs they put at the entrances were very large IEDs that are usually used against vehicles."
The battle for the Sderot police station, which was built of reinforced concrete as a fortified target for all intents and purposes, lasted 28 hours. On the ground floor, the fighters engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Some of the terrorists were killed and others were eliminated one after another as they tried to escape. In striving for contact at the station and elsewhere in the surrounding communities, including containment battles designed to block the terrorists from reaching other places, nine fighters were lost and 35 were wounded.
Sderot, Photo: Yaniv Zohar
"The station has become a military target in every respect, in a civilian environment. It was impossible to do magic and not take risks," the fighters say. "All relevant tools were used in this incident except for an F-16 bomb. We stretched far beyond and gave the widest possible response."
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