Chaim Ben-Shimul, a 57-year-old MDA paramedic, spoke to Arutz Sheva on Wednesday less than 24 hours after he was called to treat one of his own grandchildren after a rocket attack on the city.  His granddaughter, five-year-old Lior, was playing with two other children when terrorists fired a rocket from nearby Gaza.  The children were hit by shrapnel as they ran to a sheltered room.  The room in which they had been playing was completely destroyed.

“The ride that usually takes a few minutes felt like an eternity,” Ben-Shimul said of the ride to the site of the attack.  Lior had been hit by many pieces of shrapnel and was covered in blood, he recalled.  Since the attack he has remained by her side in the hospital as she has gone through several procedures and operations to remove the shrapnel.  “I simply can’t leave her,” he said.

Ben-Shimul said that as one of the founders of Sderot he had always encouraged his children and grandchildren to stay in the city, and had told them that things would be fine.  Young Lior had been seeing a psychologist to deal with the trauma of living with constant rocket attacks, he said, and he had always tried to encourage her.