“They kept banging on the door”: Israeli woman saves her daughter with rolling pin and vacuum cleaner

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Just like a ‘normal bomb attack’ that they have been ‘used to for years’, Irit Lahav flees with her daughter into the shelter of the house. But resident of kibbutz Nir Oz soon noticed that something was different than normal, she later told CNN.

‘Shots and grenades everywhere, endless, endless, endless. I thought about what to do. Will they break down our door? How can I be sure it is locked? I started calling people from the kibbutz and asking how to lock the door. But no one knew,” the Israeli told the American television channel.

Barricade with rolling pins and vacuum cleaners

Although all houses built since 1993 have air raid shelters, these are designed to protect against a rocket attack, not an armed attack. The steel doors are heavy, but cannot be locked for security reasons.

Suddenly the redeeming news: Lahav’s brother sends a photo of the door to his bomb shelter – which he has locked with two broomsticks. But there’s a problem: Lahav has no brooms. “But then I remembered I have a wall stick. So I brought that and my Dyson vacuum cleaner,” says the Israeli. With that she locked the steel door. She had no other choice because she knew that if the Hamas fighters came, she would die.

“It was like an endless nightmare”

«My daughter and I could do nothing but hug each other. Under the table, hidden in the dark,” says the mother. ‘We thought we were going to die. They kept banging on the door trying to get it open. I was sure the vacuum cleaner and rolling pin wouldn’t hold up, but they did.”

After about ten minutes, the shouting and shooting seemed to end as the attackers left the house. But after an hour they came back – and then a third time. “It was like an endless nightmare.” But the fighters could not get past the Lahav barricade.

But not everyone was as lucky as she was. The Israeli estimates that about 30 percent of the kibbutz’s residents were killed or kidnapped in the surprise attack on Saturday. (gs)

Source: Blick