'I have never seen such brutality,' says ER doctor in Israeli city close to Gaza border
CBC
With the noise of thunderous missile attacks from both Hamas and Israel's military filling the air, the emergency department at the Barzilai Medical Centre in Ashkelon feels like a sanctuary.
The southern Israeli city is less than 15 kilometres from the Gaza Strip.
Hamas's continuous rocket attacks have transformed the community of 150,000 people into the front lines of a war zone. Most streets are deserted, people are shuttered inside their homes and every day there are new impact craters in residential neighbourhoods from incoming rocket strikes.
The booms of outgoing Israeli missile and artillery launches are continuous. They are occasionally punctuated by Israeli sirens as the country's Iron Dome anti-missile system tracks an incoming rocket from Gaza and responds by shooting defences into the air.
The entrance to the hospital, underneath a huge, bombproof concrete canopy, has become one of the few places people say they feel safe enough to congregate and share their experiences in the four-day-old war has already claimed at least 1,600 lives.
Israel has seen gun battles in the streets of its own towns for the first time in decades and neighbourhoods in Gaza have been reduced to rubble.
Raz Cohen, 24, was at the hospital visiting two friends who were shot when Hamas militants stormed the Supernova music festival early Saturday morning.
He barely survived himself. He told CBC News he needed to talk to people about what he experienced, hoping by expressing his sorry and anger he can help deal with the post-traumatic stress he believes may be inevitable.
"It was something like 200 people that ran away in the open area — and they shot at all of us," he said. "I saw people get shot in the head, in the leg, in the shoulder. They died before my eyes."
Cohen, who's from Ashkelon, says he only arrived at the festival three hours before the attack. Initially, he and his friends tried to hide under a stage, but says when they were discovered by the gunmen carrying machine guns, they ran for their lives.
He says he survived by hiding in a forested area on the edge of the venue, and by lying motionless for six hours until Israeli soldiers arrived.
The death count from the massacre at the festival is estimated at 260, but based on the carnage he witnessed, Cohen says he believes it may be much higher.
Living with the threat of attacks is part of life in Ashkelon, he says. But the immensity and brutality of the massacre makes this different, Cohen added.
"We have forgiven them (Hamas) for many problems. But this is not a problem we can forgive them for. We need to attack and attack strongly," he said.