British-Israeli man describes terrifying ordeal as Hamas militants stormed home
A British-Israeli citizen and his wife have told of their 12 hour ordeal locked in a bomb-proof safe room as Hamas militants set their house on fire and gunfights erupted around them.
At times, they were just inches from the militants and were forced to stay put as Hamas fighters engaged Israeli Defence Force (IDF) troops for hours with no water and no food, stuck in the pyjamas they were wearing when they woke up.
Ben, who did not wish to give his second name, shared his terrifying ordeal with Sky News from an evacuation point near the Dead Sea.
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Originally from Worcestershire, Ben and his wife have lived in a kibbutz named Be’eri, located around 5km from the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip, for the past 26 years.
This map shows the position of Kibbutz Be’eri
The 52-year-old moved there after meeting his wife-to-be while visiting his brother, who had travelled to Israel as a volunteer.
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Ben woke up to sounds of rockets being fired, something he said was “not unusual”, and was met outside by his neighbours, who – like him – were in their pyjamas.
“We assumed it would be over soon, but it wasn’t,” he said.
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system seen intercepting rockets launched from the Gaza Strip – as seen from Sderot, southern Israel on Sunday
He watched the Iron Dome system intercept a number of rockets, before receiving a text message telling all those in the area to lock themselves in their safe rooms.
The safe room, like many in the area, is a small 5x4sqm room with gas and blast-proofing on the door, which cannot be opened from outside when shut.
There is a small window, which is reinforced with blast-proof steel, that can be opened to the outside.
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The room also doubles up as a bedroom for his son when he stays over.
He expected to receive an all-clear message within half an hour, but instead began hearing Arabic voices in the distance gradually approaching his house.
‘They were a few centimetres away from me’
Ben estimates 30 Hamas militants were in his kibbutz, and the speed and scale of the attack took the neighbourhood by surprise.
Ben’s neighbourhood in Kibbutz Be’eri, before the attack
“We were so underprepared for such an unprecedented attack, and we didn’t have water, food, anything [in the safe room]” he said.
Ben and his wife were laying silent on the floor of the room when they heard a commotion outside his house and more shouting – before hearing a “tremendous boom” as his front door was knocked in.
“They were a few centimetres, a few inches away from me as I’m holding the door,” he said.
“I was cold, I was sweating profusely within an instant on such a high level of alert.”
Despite their close proximity, the militants didn’t try to enter the safe room, but Ben heard them smashing the house outside.
‘It was so unbelievably hot’
He presumes the TV and windows were broken, as crashing and banging was heard for some time before the attackers appeared to leave the house.
“Very soon afterwards, we could hear crackling and we could begin to smell smoke,” he said.
Becoming emotional, he said “we understood that our home was on fire”.
Ben and his wife listened as their house fell apart around them, with the roof caving in and more windows shattering from the heat.
The door, which is built to prevent a gas attack, had its seal melted away – allowing thick smoke to enter the safe room.
“It was so hot, it was so unbelievably hot,” Ben said, “I don’t know how we didn’t pass out.”
He described how the pair of them lay on the floor with bedsheets from their son’s bed covering their mouths to block out the smoke.
“We managed to breathe every now and again through a crack in our blinds,” he said.
After hours in what he called “hell”, Ben and his wife heard Israeli forces arrive and engage the Hamas fighters.
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How the Hamas attack on Israel unfolded.
Despite the arrival of friendly troops, there would be no respite from the heat and the smoke for Ben and his wife for another six hours, while they listened to gunfire.
“For another six hours, we listened to gunfights all around us,” he said.
“I think there was a gunman on our roof, as the shots sounded so close,”
The pair were trapped, with no choice but to stay put.
Through the crack in the blinds of the safe room, they watched a neighbour’s house get set alight.
“We saw it burst into flames,” Ben said, explaining that the fire quickly spread to other houses in the neighbourhood.
He doesn’t know the fate of many of his neighbours, but he saw a massive explosion emanate from the safe room of another house nearby.
After hours of fighting, Ben said he and his wife took heart after “the shouting turned from Arabic to Hebrew”, and IDF soldiers began going house to house in the neighbourhood evacuating survivors of the attack.
Soldiers were able to pull the pair through the window of the safe room once opened by Ben, as the house on the other side of the door was presumably too unstable to escape through given the fire damage.
They were rushed into the back of a 4×4 and driven away under the cover of darkness, unable to survey the damage to their home or even grab any spare clothes.
‘When on earth are we going to be safe?’
Ben and his wife had entered the safe room at around 7am and emerged more than 12 hours later, sweat-drenched, dehydrated and still in the pyjamas they wore when they entered.
When they were dropped off at an extraction point in a car park, Ben said they were given some food and water.
Becoming emotional again, Ben said a soldier offered to give him a pair of socks, as he noticed he was walking around barefoot on the gravel of the car park.
“It was an act of kindness – I won’t forget it, no matter how small it was.”
But they weren’t out of the woods yet.
Waiting in the car park for over an hour, Ben said a shout rang out that Hamas militants were nearby, which was quickly followed by the sound of gunshots and small puffs of dust popping up on the ground around him.
“I thought, ‘when on earth are we going to be safe?’,” he said.
When the fighting ceased, he and other survivors were loaded onto an open-top truck and taken to a nearby sports stadium, before they were moved on to an area near the Dead Sea and put up in hotels.
When asked what he will do now, Ben said he didn’t know if he could stay in the country after the ordeal, given the presumed damage to his home and the wider kibbutz.
“A big part of me wants to leave Israel, even though we’ve lived here for 26 years.”
“It’s our home,” he said, “and all that’s gone”.
World
IDF admits ‘serious offence’ after using vehicle marked ambulance in raid in which a grandmother was killed
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has admitted to a “serious offence” after a Sky News investigation analysed CCTV footage showing the moment an 80-year-old Palestinian grandmother was shot in the West Bank.
Halima Abu Leil was shot during a raid in Nablus. The grandmother died soon after.
During the course of the investigation, we noted that a blue vehicle marked as an ambulance and with a red light on its roof was used by IDF troops to enter the West Bank.
Our investigation stated: “Figures who appear to be Israeli military forces exit the ambulance in the foreground. They are equipped with helmets, backpacks, rifles, and other gear.”
The use of a marked medical vehicle for a security operation could be a contravention of the Geneva Convention and a war crime – as well as Halima’s killing.
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CCTV shows Palestinian grandmother shot in IDF raid
The IDF has subsequently told Sky News: “On December 19, 2024, soldiers from the ‘Duvdevan’ unit took part in an operational mission to detain terrorists in Nablus.
“During the operation, an ambulance-like vehicle was used for operational purposes, without authorisation and without the relevant commanders’ approval.”
It added: “The use of the ambulance-like vehicle during the operation was a serious offence, exceeding authority, and a violation of existing orders and procedures.”
It also said the commander of the ‘Duvdevan’ unit was “reprimanded”.
However, it gave no update into the death of Halima, saying “the circumstances of the incident are being examined”.
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The United Nations Special Rapporteur on occupied Palestinian territory Francesca Albanese watched the CCTV video and told Sky News her death could be a “war crime”.
She said: “When I look at the footage, what emerges prima facie is that there were no precautions taken – within these operations whose legality is debatable – to avoid or spare civilian life.
“No principle of proportionality because there was wildfire directed at the identified target and ultimately no respect for the principle of distinction.
“So this was a murder in cold blood and could be a war crime as an extrajudicial killing.”
According to the United Nations Office Of Human Rights in occupied Palestinian territory, Israeli security forces and settlers have killed at least 813 mostly unarmed Palestinians, including 15 women and 177 children, since 7 October 2023.
Ukraine’s president is offering a prisoner swap with North Korean soldiers it has captured, in exchange for Ukrainians held by Russia.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made a direct appeal to leader Kim Jong Un after seizing two North Koreans in Russia’s Kursk region.
“In addition to the first captured soldiers from North Korea, there will undoubtedly be more. It’s only a matter of time before our troops manage to capture others,” he said in a video posted on X.
His video also included an offer of help to officials in California fighting the ongoing fires there.
It is the first time Ukraine has announced the capture of North Korean soldiers since their entry into the nearly three-year-old war last autumn.
Ukrainian and Western assessments say that some 11,000 troops from Russia‘s ally North Korea have been deployed in the Kursk region to support Moscow’s forces, although Russia has neither confirmed nor denied their presence.
Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un met in Pyongyang to sign a ‘military pact’ in June 2024. Pic: Kremlin Photo/AP
Mr Zelenskyy has said Russian and North Korean forces had suffered heavy losses.
“Ukraine is ready to hand over Kim Jong Un’s soldiers to him if he can organise their exchange for our warriors who are being held captive in Russia,” Mr Zelenskyy added.
He posted a short video showing the interrogation of two men, presented as North Korean soldiers.
One of them is lying on a bed with bandaged hands, the other is sitting with a bandage on his jaw.
Ukraine said on Saturday it had captured two North Korean soldiers. Pic: Volodymyr Zelenskyy/X
One of the men said through an interpreter that he did not know he was fighting against Ukraine and had been told he was on a training exercise. He said he hid in a shelter during the offensive and was found a couple of days later.
He said that if he was ordered to return to North Korea, he would, but he was ready to stay in Ukraine if given the chance.
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Sky News has not been able to verify the video.
“One of them (soldiers) expressed a desire to stay in Ukraine, the other to return to Korea,” said Mr Zelenskyy, adding that for North Korean soldiers who did not wish to return home, there may be other options available.
Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is set for the inaugural launch of its new space rocket on Monday in a development that could add more fuel to the billionaire space race.
The New Glenn rocket is due to blast off from Cape Canaveral – the result of a multi-billion dollar, decade-long effort that could set the stage for Amazon’s satellite constellation venture and dent Elon Musk’s market share.
Mr Musk’s SpaceX has dominated the scene for many years but both Mr Bezos and Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson have designs on outer space… and the wealth tied up in its exploration.
New Glenn on the launch pad in December. Pic: Blue Origin
Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin
“Ever since I was five years old, I’ve dreamed of traveling to space,” Mr Bezos said ahead of his journey to the edge of space in 2021.
He founded the Blue Origin venture with the aim of having “millions of people working and living in space”.
For years it has launched – and landed – its reusable New Shepard rocket to and from the brim of Earth’s atmosphere, but has never sent anything into orbit. That could all change on Monday.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin and Amazon. Pic: Reuters
Blue Origin will be hoping its New Glenn rocket will be able to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the world’s most active rocket.
Compared to Mr Musk’s Falcon 9, the New Glenn is about twice as powerful and its payload bay diameter is two times larger in order to fit bigger batches of satellites.
The upcoming launch is also a key certification flight required by the US Space Force before New Glenn can launch national security payloads as part of multi-billion dollar government tenders Blue Origin hopes to win.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off in October 2024. Pic: Reuters
Elon Musk and SpaceX
“I want to die on Mars – just not on impact,” Elon Musk once quipped.
The Donald Trump ally, who is frequently pictured wearing an “Occupy Mars” shirt, has enjoyed relative dominance of the private space industry through his company SpaceX.
Back in 2016, Mr Musk outlined his vision of building a colony on Mars “in our lifetimes” – with the first rocket propelling humans to the Red Planet by 2025, though this deadline does not appear likely to be met.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump speak at a SpaceX launch in 2020. Pic: Reuters
For many years the company used an image of the Martian surface being terraformed (turned Earth-like) in its promotional material. However, a NASA-sponsored study published in 2018 dismissed these plans as impossible with the technology available then.
SpaceX missions have included both US government contracts and launching the company’s Starlink satellite internet network.
And while Mr Bezos’ New Glenn rocket is much more powerful than the successful Falcon 9, SpaceX’s next-generation Starship, a fully reusable rocket system currently in development, would be more powerful still.
Mr Musk sees Starship as crucial to expanding Starlink’s footprint in orbit. Its next test flight is expected later this month and will involve deploying mock satellites.
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Sir Richard Branson. Pic: Reuters
Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic
Also seeking a stake in the upper atmosphere is Virgin founder Sir Richard, whose Virgin Galactic effort took its first tourists to the edge of space in 2023.
The crew took the passengers about 55 miles (88km) above Earth where they experienced zero gravity during the flight which lasted just over an hour.
“My mum taught me to never give up and to reach for the stars,” the British billionaire once said.
The company is currently taking a pause from flights as it develops new space vehicles, Forbes reported in October last year.
Its new fleet of Delta vehicles are scheduled to resume commercial spaceflight by 2026.
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