Three years after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, medical workers who treated the wounded are recounting how they improvised lifesaving care while terrorists moved through their own communities. Their accounts describe a day when hospitals and clinics became front lines, and when caregivers worked under fire while unsure whether their own families were safe.
Nil Kirsht-Levi, a nurse with Clalit Southern District who lives in Kibbutz Magen, spent that morning treating patients remotely from her safe room while trying to protect her three children as terrorists went house to house. At the same time, she texted her sister, Rimon Buchshtab-Kirsht, who lived nearby in Kibbutz Nirim. Her sister wrote that she could hear Arabic and that terrorists had entered her home.
Kirsht-Levi said the scale of loss was overwhelming. «I lost more than 30 patients that day, more than 200 people I knew, and around 100 people I knew were kidnapped,» she said. Weeks of uncertainty followed before she saw her sister alive in a Hamas video. Kirsht-Levi campaigned for her release and welcomed her home 53 days later, emaciated and covered in scars, as part of a ceasefire deal in November 2023. Her sister's husband, Yagev Buchshtab, was murdered by the terrorists.
Despite the grief, Kirsht-Levi said she and her colleagues keep working to recover. «We work every day to recover and rehabilitate ourselves. Every day, we fall and get back up, but we are here — for ourselves, for others and we have won,» she said. «We should never forget, but we must move forward, live every moment and keep going. It's a privilege to be alive.»
Michaela Koretsky, a midwife with Clalit's Southern District, was jolted awake by air raid sirens at 6:29 a.m. as Hamas launched thousands of rockets at Israel, providing cover for terrorists who crossed the border. She rushed with her husband and children to a shelter, where she received a message from Eran, a member of Kibbutz Alumim's civil defense squad, asking if she was home. Eran then began bringing wounded kibbutz members to her for first aid.
«When they entered the house carrying Amichai, he was covered in blood… I switched into nurse mode,» Koretsky said. She had Amichai placed on the floor as gunfire continued outside the kitchen window. She improvised bandages and prepared an IV while staying in contact with an emergency room doctor from Soroka Medical Center who was also in the kibbutz. The doctor confirmed Amichai was stable. Then Eyal was brought in, shot with one bullet lodged in his lung. After Koretsky placed him on an IV and administered additional oxygen, it became clear he needed to be evacuated.
«We needed to save lives, so I switched my brain into action mode and did what needed to be done,» she said. Her husband, Tzviki, accompanied by members of the kibbutz's civil defense squad, reached his car and alone evacuated the wounded under fire to Netivot, where they were transferred to waiting ambulances. From there, both Amichai and Eyal were taken to Soroka Medical Center for further treatment.
Prof. Shlomi Codish, director of the hospital in Beersheba, said he made three lifesaving decisions early on Oct. 7 that shaped the response throughout the day. First, he and his team decided not to send the night shift home, allowing the hospital to begin the day with twice its normal staffing level. At 7:45 a.m., they declared a mass-casualty incident, despite not yet knowing how many wounded would arrive, and alerted all available staff to report to the hospital. Finally, they ordered additional blood supplies in anticipation of the surge of casualties.
«We usually start the shift with 50 units of blood in our blood bank. By the end of the day, we had given 250 units. If we hadn't ordered additional blood early that morning, we might have run out and people may have died,» Codish said. He described several overwhelming challenges, beginning with the sheer number of wounded. «In the first 24 hours, we received 674 wounded people. At the peak, we received more than 80 in a single hour, with an average of just 40 seconds between wounded people arriving,» he said.
Codish called it «one of the largest mass-casualty events resulting from terror in human history.» The hospital itself was also under fire, with dozens of incoming missile warnings from the Gaza Strip while attacks took place simultaneously at a very large number of sites. The second challenge was the immediate impact of the invasion on hospital staff themselves, many of whom were dealing with their own families' safety while treating the wounded.
Three years on, the accounts from Kirsht-Levi, Koretsky and Codish offer a window into how medical workers in southern Israel responded on a day when terror hit home. Their stories of loss and endurance continue to emerge as the nation marks the anniversary and grapples with recovery and rehabilitation.