As mentioned, MDA teams also established a treatment site at the Ofakim station.
EMT Romi Dar, from the Netanya station, arrived to assist.
“I realized something unusual was happening when I started seeing the videos; I wrote to my volunteer supervisor that I wanted to assist MDA teams in the south. Within twenty minutes, I joined an ambulance driver who came to pick me up from home, and we drove together to the MDA station in Ofakim.
It was very hard to hear the reports on the way; sirens caught us, and little by little I understood what we were heading into,” Romi recalls. “We reached Ofakim and helped run a makeshift hospital at the station. A police officer who had been critically wounded by gunfire was brought to us and, sadly, was pronounced dead,
That was the first body I saw that day. While MDA teams operated in the city under fire, more and more wounded arrived at the improvised hospital we opened at the station; I treated them along with the MDA teams already at the station, until dispatch rushed me toward Moshav Yated, from where reports of additional gunshot victims were received. For long minutes, we drove on the road completely alone; there wasn’t a single vehicle on the road, it felt like Yom Kippur. A military jeep stopped us and transferred three gunshot victims from the party to us.
We treated them, evacuated them to Soroka Hospital, and later returned with the ambulance to Ofakim. The sight of the many bodies in the streets does not leave my mind. The MDA dispatch center rushed us to the wounded to provide medical treatment and save lives. We heard many horrific stories from wounded survivors who also told us about those who were murdered; I know this is a day I will never forget in my life.”
