Woman and daughter survive 12-hour Hamas siege using vacuum cleaner and rolling pin
Saved herself and her daughter from Hamas using a vacuum cleaner (Collage RBC-Ukraine)
A resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz, located in northern Israel and very close to the border with the Gaza Strip, survived a harrowing 12-hour siege by Hamas terrorists. She barricaded herself with her daughter in a secure room and improvised a lock on the door with whatever was at hand, according to CNN.
Rit Lahav, along with her daughter, is a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz, which suffered greatly from the attack by Hamas terrorists. On Saturday morning, she heard that the militants had already entered her community and quickly ran with her daughter to a bomb shelter.
However, once inside, she realized that the room was prepared as a bomb shelter but not for the armed terrorists' assault. There wasn't even a lock on the door because all the bomb shelters built in Israel since 1993 are reinforced with concrete walls and heavy steel doors.
They are designed to withstand missile strikes, not invasions, and do not have locks on the doors for safety reasons since they should be easy to open during a missile strike.
Lahav looked around bewildered and sought advice from friends, neighbors, and relatives.
"Everywhere endless, endless, endless shooting and grenades. So I’m trying to figure out what to do. Are they going to maybe break into our door? How can I make sure it’s locked? And I started texting and calling people from the kibbutz how to lock the door, and nobody knew," she said.
Later, she received a photo from her brother - he showed how he locked his doors using two rakes.
"I thought, I don’t have any brooms. How would I do that? But then I remembered I had a rolling stick and I took that and then I took my Dyson vacuum," Lahav added.
While she was constructing the improvised barricade, Lahav heard men's voices inside the house. Later, Hamas militants attempted to break down the door for about 10 minutes. She heard shouts and gunfire inside her home.
"There was nothing we could do except we were hugging, my daughter and I, under the table, hiding in the dark.
"We started saying to each other, ‘I love you’. My daughter says ‘Mom, I love you, I really appreciate everything you did for me.’ And I told her how much I love her. We thought we were just going to die and they kept banging the door trying to open. And I was sure that whatever I did, the vacuum cleaner and the rolling stick wouldn’t hold," she shared.
The improvised barricade for protection against Hamas (screenshot)
After some time, it became quiet, and Lahav realized that the attackers had left the house.
However, the relief didn't last long because another group arrived, and they attempted to break the door again. Fortunately, these terrorists were also unsuccessful.
"It was so scary.Then the third time again they came. It was like an endless nightmare," Lahav confessed.
In total, the woman and her daughter had to endure a 12-hour siege until IDF defenders arrived. According to the woman's estimates, 30% of the kibbutz residents either died or were taken captive.
Kibbutz Nir Oz was one of several kibbutzim that bore the brunt of the Hamas invasion on Saturday morning.
