Escape from Kfar Aza: One family's 36 hour ordeal trapped in safe room at Kibbutz where Hamas massacre killed 100

Liora and her family were trapped in the safe room of their home as Hamas attacked their kibbutz

When Noa Fein received a text message on Saturday morning from her stepmother, Liora, telling her that her kibbutz was under attack from Hamas, she feared the worst.

The family – Liora, her adult son and daughter and two teenage granddaughters – were hiding out in a safe room in their house at the Kfar Aza Kibbutz, just over two miles from the border with Gaza.

Outside, they could hear heavy gunfire as young men from the community, including Liora’s other son, Tal, tried to fight off the attackers.

Israeli rescuers and troops search the scene of an attack in the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Aza on the border with the Gaza Strip.

"I was freaking out,” says Noa, an artist, who was also forced to take refuge in a bomb shelter at her home in Beit Zait near Jerusalem as Hamas militants fired thousands of rockets into Israel.

"At first, they didn't realise the severity of the situation. They're used to red alerts for missile attacks as they are so close to the Gaza border, so that's sort of normal to them: they went to the safe room. Then, they told me there are actually terrorists in the kibbutz and outside there are shootings and more noises.”

Images and video footage of Kfar Aza released this week by Israeli authorities show the kibbutz was decimated by militants. Properties were destroyed, vehicles torched and more than 100 people from the close-knit community of around 700 are believed to have been killed. The kibbutz in Kfar Aza was one of the worst-hit targets of the Hamas offensive, alongside a music festival in nearby Re'im, where 260 revellers were massacred.

It was over 36 hours before the family was finally evacuated by soldiers from the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and taken to safety at another kibbutz north of Tel Aviv, where they are recovering.

Sisters Naomi and Noa Fein were deeply worried when their stepmother, Liora, told them Hamas militants had stormed her kibbutz.

For the vast majority of their time in the room they had no access to food, water, or a toilet. Meanwhile, oxygen levels were dwindling due to tight seals on the windows and door and it became stiflingly hot. One mobile phone was their only connection to the outside world, as they tried to get messages through to family, as well as the emergency services.

“The air started getting dense. At one point, they told me they tried to light a candle because the electricity had failed and the candle would just go out because there wasn’t enough oxygen for it to burn,” says Noa, who has visited her family since Saturday’s attacks. “I asked them if they slept at all and they said yes, they fell asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow – their bodies were shutting down. They said it was such a blessing to be out of this hell for an hour.”

Before the attack, the family had been looking forward to a weekend of celebration to mark the end of the Sukkot festival, a religious holiday in Israel. Noa and her family had also been due to visit Liora at the kibbutz to join the family party, but abandoned their plans at the last minute due to other commitments.

On Friday, the family had celebrated together and one of Liora’s granddaughters, who lives with her parents and two younger siblings in a nearby kibbutz house, had opted to stay at her grandmother’s home that night for a sleepover with her cousin, who was visiting from Nahalal, in the north of the country.

Naomi and her stepmother, Liora, before the conflict began.

In the early hours of the morning, they were woken up by an alert telling them to take shelter. All houses in Israel have, by law, a safe room, which is fortified with iron structures in the walls and metal shutters.

The room, however, is not required to have a sturdy lock on the door, as it is designed to survive a rocket or bomb attack, rather than a terrorist invasion.

"It is just an ordinary spare room,” says Naomi, Noa’s sister, who lives in Ireland, but regularly visits her family at the kibbutz. “It’s where we stay when we go to visit. It has a bed, Liora keeps toys for the kids in there. There are no supplies, no bathroom.”

The adults in the room took turns holding up the heavy door handle, swapping shifts every hour.

"I think the militants didn’t realise that it wasn’t actually locked,” says Noa. “They tried the door, but when it didn’t open straight away, they stopped trying. It was a miracle, really.”

Later on Saturday, the family heard voices speaking Hebrew in the house. The IDF had arrived, however, a bitter battle with the militants was still going on outside and they quickly realised their home was being used as a makeshift field hospital.

"They could hear soldiers and people who were injured outside,” says Noa. “At one point soldiers spoke to them and asked if they were OK, but they said it was too dangerous to try to evacuate them then.”

At 1pm, around six hours after the attacks began, Noa received a message from Liora saying that she thought there had been a direct missile hit on their house. They knew the single working mobile phone battery was beginning to run out and the other phones had no service, which the family believes could have been caused by an intentional network wipeout by Hamas. They did not hear from them for another 23 hours.

"I got that message at 1pm and then nothing until noon the next day,” says Noa. "Hours and hours went by. We thought they had been kidnapped, we had started to see on the news that people were being taken, so we really imagined the worst.”

The IDF had started to evacuate the kibbutz in waves. Due to the location of Liora’s house and continued fighting which went on nearby, they were among the last to get out.

Another family member and his children, who also live in another part of the kibbutz, were released earlier.

"He said his kids, who are under ten, saw dead bodies everywhere,” Noa says. “It was a war zone. He said another friend of theirs was telling his daughter, ‘I need you to look up at the lights and count the lights that are not working, so we can fix them’. He wanted to make sure she didn’t look down.”

When it was finally the turn of Liora and her family to be rescued, on Sunday afternoon, IDF soldiers spoke to them.

Noa says: "They kept asking them, ‘how many civilians are in there?’ and when they said there were five, the soldiers were looking at each other and said, ‘OK, go back inside and shut the door.’”

The soldiers had realised through the use of heat detection cameras that two militants were hiding out in another room. Worried that Liora’s family could be caught up in the crossfire if they tried to attack during the evacuation, they formed a human shield around the family as they escorted them from the house one by one.

As they walked away, there was a large explosion from inside their home.

“They had shot a grenade into into the room where the terrorists were,” Noa says. “Then they came to Liora and told her, ‘I’m sorry, we have had to do a small renovation on your house. Can you imagine?”

Liora and some of her family were taken to the Shefayim Kibbutz, where they have been given psychological support, as well as food and shelter.

However, on Monday, they received bad news.

Tal, Liora's son and a father of three, who had been missing since Saturday morning after leaving his home to defend the kibbutz, had been found dead, his body lying with those of other men from the community.

"They were very worried about him as they hadn’t heard from him since very early morning [on Saturday]”. says Noa, paying tribute to her step brother as a “really good man”, who loved the sea, where he worked at a nearby harbour.

"He was so funny,” she recalls. “He was such a funny, dry, cynical dude. He had a beautiful relationship with his wife and he was a great father.”

Naomi fears the kibbutz will never recover.

"Will anyone ever come back to live in a place that they have been massacred in?” she asks. “Where will Tal’s body be buried? For us, that was our family home and it feels like it’s gone. That’s what Liora said, ‘I don’t have a house anymore, I don’t have a home.’”

Noa says fear and uncertainty has spread throughout the kibbutz communities across Israel.

"This is the third generation in a kibbutz and they're used to the bombing,” says Noa. “But they're not used to this idea that people will come and massacre them. This was inconceivable.”

Liora and other kibbutz residents count themselves as left-wing activists, who regularly volunteered to drive sick people in Gaza to hospital appointments.

"They have friends in Gaza,” Noa says, adding that one man had received a phone call after the attacks from one of the Palestinian women he regularly assisted.

“She said to him, ‘Let's never stop talking.’ They are people there. It is not only Hamas, that’s half the story.”

"It's really important to separate Hamas, which is a terrorist organisation, from Palestine,” adds Naomi. “Palestinian people are also victims."

When visiting Liora in her temporary home this week, Noa met a young woman from Kfar Aza who had come across Hamas militants in her home on Saturday, where she was sheltering with her two young children.

"One of them told her, ‘I am Muslim, I won’t hurt you,’” she says. “And he didn’t. He asked her if he could have a banana – they were super polite with her.”

"I feel like even them [the Hamas militants], they have a choice: they can be human. They can be good, or they can be evil.”

She has hopes for a peaceful future.

“Right now, I’m writing to everyone I have ever met,” she says. “I asked them to pray for this land, because it feels so dark. So, just think about us with light and love, just send love. That's all we need right now.

"Palestinian people are here and Jewish, Israeli, people are here and we just have to live together. That has to happen.”