Friday, September 29, 2006

Tragic reality - Part 1 - The bloody saturday

3rd July, 2004

There is a guarding post located in the southern part of Adora, in the backyard of the Hazan family - the father of the family was killed in a suicide bombing in 2002 in Jerusalem being 1 of the 5 victims, settlers of Adora. The other 4 were killed on 27th of April, 2002 when a squad of Palestinian militants managed to cut the fence and infiltrate the village.

The bloody saturday (Shabbath) of 27th April

Two gunmen, disguised as Israeli soldiers approached the settlement of Adora on Friday night, cut the fence and infiltrated the village. The two decided to carry out their mission in the morning - in the upper part of the settlement a new street was under construction. Villas were half built. The gunmen hid in one of the villas and spent the night there. There are still inscriptions in Arabic on the building's walls, although I don't know what they mean.















At 9a.m. in the morning, when most of the men were in synagogue or sleeping late, the terrorists carried out a house-to-house killing spree.

(the rest of the details have been quoted from http://www.ict.org.il/spotlight/det.cfm?id=771 in order to maintain accuracy)

Four residents were killed, including a five year-old girl, who was shot in the head from close range as she slept in her parents bedrooms. Seven people were injured, two critically.

Ya'acov Shefi, a policeman was attending prayers in the community's synagogue when he heard gunshots.

"It was close to nine in the morning; I heard gunshots but never dreamed it was an attack. Then I heard bursts of gunfire and became concerned. I raced toward my house and saw two people near the dining-room door - they wore army uniforms and flak jackets, and I asked them what had happened. They didn't answer and began shooting at me," he said.

Shefi ran from house to house, alerting residents that there were terrorists dressed as soldiers. At a neighbor's house he learned his daughter had been killed and his wife and two sons--aged two and four--wounded. "I saw my wife, Shiri, being carried out on a stretcher, and she called out 'they murdered our children,' " he said.

In another home, the terrorists burst into the second-story bedroom and shot a couple as they lay sleeping, killing the woman and critically injuring her husband. Their son was also shot and wounded in his bedroom.

Two additional residents were killed as they attempted to engage the gunmen. The terrorists fled back the way they had come.

Another source:

Anat Harari who was moderately wounded in the attack said that she at first thought it was Israeli soldiers - "They were only 1.5 meters away" She fled to the bathroom while the terrorists tried, unsuccessfully, to open the locked door.

The terrorists first entered Shefi's home and killed the 5 year old Danielle. Her two brothers, Uriel (2) and Eliad (4) were lightly injured and so was their mother Shir. The father, Yaakov, was at the synagogue during the attack.

The terrorists continued to the next house - Greenberg family. First they entered Nathan's room (14) and injured him moderately while he was in his sleep, then they climbed the stairs to the second floor and shot the couple in their bedroom - the wife, Kathya, was murdered. The husband, Vladimir, was heavily injured.

Outside Greenberg's house, the terrorists were confronted by the Israeli soldiers. In the exchange of fire, they've managed to kill one of the soldiers, Eric Bekker and injure another one. After the confrontation, the terrorists have successfully escaped the settlement.

As far as I know, at least 1 of the terrorists involved in the attack was killed by IDF later.