‘We will not be taken hostage,’ Nimrod Eliraz, sole survivor of the Nahal Oz command center, recounts how four soldiers fought for hours against Hamas terrorists, without ammunition.
On Saturday, October 7th, 2023, the Nahal Oz outpost was put under siege by swarms of terrorists. Lieutenant Nimrod Eliraz, along with Lieutenant Yohai Dukhan, Warrant officer Ibrahim Kharuba
and Staff sergeant Itay Avraham Ron, stood at the entrance to the outpost and personally defended the eighteen soldiers who were hiding in the command center without weapons.
“We said: Come on guys, let’s get them out of here. We won’t let them get in,” Nimrod recalls in his first interview with the Uvda television program. During the long hours, the four tried to keep the enemy away, but the terrorists soon broke down the door. “There was one explosion that knocked down the main door of the outpost, and, there was nothing separating us from the terrorists,” he described.
Dukhan and Kharuba set up a makeshift position at the entrance to the command center, and there was heroic fighting at the site. At one point, the terrorists threw a grenade at them, and Dukhan, who saw it landing near us, “pushed me aside, shouted ‘grenade’ and jumped on to it to catch the impact.” Fortunately, the grenade did not explode.On Saturday, October 7th, 2023, the Nahal Oz outpost was put under siege by swarms of terrorists. Lieutenant Nimrod Eliraz, along with Lieutenant Yohai Dukhan, Warrant officer Ibrahim Kharuba
and Staff sergeant Itay Avraham Ron, stood at the entrance to the outpost and personally defended the eighteen soldiers who were hiding in the command center without weapons.
“We said: Come on guys, let’s get them out of here. We won’t let them get in,” Nimrod recalls in his first interview with the Uvda television program. During the long hours, the four tried to keep the enemy away, but the terrorists soon broke down the door. “There was one explosion that knocked down the main door of the outpost, and, there was nothing separating us from the terrorists,” he described.
Dukhan and Kharuba set up a makeshift position at the entrance to the command center, and there was heroic fighting at the site. At one point, the terrorists threw a grenade at them, and Dukhan, who saw it landing near us, “pushed me aside, shouted ‘grenade’ and jumped on to it to catch the impact.” Fortunately, the grenade did not explode.
With ammunition running low and hearing calls in Arabic to surrender, the four made a decision: “If this is over, we would rather take a bullet to our heads, but we will not be taken hostage,” Nimrod said. When the ammunition ran out, they pulled out commando knives. “We jumped on the terrorist with a knife in our hand, and he was taken by surprise,” he described.
Shortly afterwards, they threw a firebomb into the military center, which quickly caught fire. Of the eighteen soldiers inside, only seven managed to escape. Nimrod, who was wounded, woke up in Soroka Hospital, in Be’er Sheva. “My first memory was seeing my mother on my right and my father on my left,” he said.
Nimrod continued, “I just wanted to know what happened to my soldiers and to get back to the base.” Nimrod adds that it was important to him that the parents of the female lookouts know: “We fought to bring them home.”
Seven soldiers fell in battle defending the Nahal Oz base and fourteen fell defending the command center.
