An American citizen vacationing in Israel made it out alive from the music festival where Hamas men attacked killing 260 people. 28 year old Liroy Alex from Chicago was at the festival with friends when gunmen parachuted into the site on the Gaza border.
Alex in an interview with Mail Online he said he didn’t realize what was happening and even joked with his friends thinking the organizers were setting off fireworks. “I heard loud bangs in the area and at first we joked that fireworks were going off. But then the organizers stopped the music and informed us that we were being attacked with rockets,” he said. “Very quickly we realized that the situation was much more serious, as shots were fired. We started running to save ourselves» he adds.
Alex had gone to the festival with two friends, Eliad Shemesh and his girlfriend. All three managed to get to their vehicles and hide, but the Hamas men followed him. “We got to our car and found that the drive was empty. In the background we saw a group of about 20 motorcyclists zigzagging across the road. They were all armed. At first we didn’t understand what it was. The girl who was with us started freaking out, but I told her to calm down.”
Alex was driving as fast as possible in his attempt to escape. “As we slowed down, we saw a motorcyclist being hit. That’s when I decided to turn back and the terrorists started shooting at our car.” The car was hit by gunfire, shattering the windows and causing the American to be injured by shards of glass in his eyes. “We had no idea what was going on. As we passed, they shot at us. Everything exploded. There were glasses everywhere.” Alex was shot twice in the lower back while his friend’s girlfriend suffered a punctured lung from a bullet wound.
Eventually, the three of them could go no further and stopped at what looked like a construction site. “We tried to save the girl. We didn’t know who was shooting at us because we didn’t understand what was happening. We just saw two groups and thought they were Arabs living in the desert and decided to make a fuss,” Alex said. “We called the police, ambulances, friends – we sent our location – but it took three hours before we knew no one was coming.”
As Alex and his friends waited in the vehicle, the girl died. “On the phone, my friends told me we were in a war zone. We could hear bombs and gunfire everywhere». Despite the panic, Alex managed to record what happened. He recalled how his friend was in such a state of shock that he still called for an ambulance, despite the fact that the woman had died. He recorded himself lying on the ground covered in blood on his face and body. By pure luck, Alex and his friend were found by soldiers, 13 hours after the shooting began.
He spent most of the last week in the hospital in Israel and underwent several operations. Doctors delivered the bullets that ended up in his hip and back, telling him that he is lucky he can still walk after he had been shot near his spine. He still can’t see out of his left eye and it’s not certain if he’ll ever fully recover. Despite being away from home he hopes to return to his hometown of Chicago in the coming weeks.
Source: News Beast
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