Teen survives terror attack; parents killed

An Israeli-american teenager survived a siege on his home by Hamas attackers over the weekend after his parents shielded him from the gunfire but were killed themselves.

The family lived on a kibbutz in southern Israel near the border with Gaza. They had less than a minute to seek safety after being alerted to the attack.

As the fighters invaded their home, they scrambled into a tiny room meant to protect them from rocket attacks. Shlomi Mathias had his arm blown off trying to keep the fighters out of the room, relatives said. As fighters peppered the room with gunfire, Debbie Mathias yelled at her son, Rotem, to get down. Then she was shot dead; the bullet traveled through her and hit him in the stomach.

Rotem Mathias, 16, stayed underneath his mother and played dead for about 30 minutes before running for shelter under a bed and eventually hiding under a blanket in an adjacent laundry room, relatives told The Associated Press. Twice, Rotem Mathias managed to elude the fighters — some of them laughing — before he was rescued by Israeli soldiers.

“The last thing my dad said is he lost his arm. Then my mom died on top of me,” Rotem Mathias told ABC News in an interview from the hospital where he was being treated for gunshot and shrapnel wounds. He was released Tuesday.

“I just stopped my breathing. I lowered it down as much as I possibly could. I didn’t move and was terrified,” he said.

The attack came hours after the family had gathered for a festive evening that included music, since both their parents were musicians. Shlomi Mathias was a music teacher; Debbie Mathias was a singer and songwriter. Their parents were in a nostalgic mood, talking about how they met.