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Reporter jumps into action to save slain friend's children after Hamas attack: 'Absolute chaos'
By Taylor Penley
Published October 20, 2023
Journalist Ilana Curiel answered the call to action and saved two of her friend's children after Hamas terrorists attacked his home.
Photojournalist Roy Edan's son Michael, 8, and daughter Amalya, 6, were barricaded in a closet with their mother's body for hours when they managed to call their aunt, uncle and the police to tell them their parents were murdered.
"Luckily the kids were resourceful. They managed to get a call out to Roy's brother who got in touch with a special commando unit," she told FOX News on Thursday.
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Amalya (L) and Michael (R) survived for hours by hiding in a closet with their mother's body. (FOX & Friends First/Screengrab)
"I rushed over there. We're talking about the evening because everything was chaos, absolute chaos in the morning of that October 7th," she said.
Curiel, a reporter at the English-language Israeli news outlet Ynet, told The U.S. Sun that Edan, who she'd worked with for years, didn't respond to her messages the day Hamas launched its surprise attacks on Israeli civilians, and she started fearing the worst.
"I got word that his wife was probably killed and that his two children were barricading themselves inside of his safe room," she told the outlet. "I wasn't quite sure if the children were alive or dead… I decided to rush over there, hoping that at least two of his kids were alive."
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Slain photojournalist Roy Edan pictured with his family. (FOX & Friends First/Screengrab)
She drove through heavy shelling to carry out the task, describing the road she took to get the children and take them to safety as the "pathway to hell," according to the report.
Thanks to Curiel, they are now recovering with family.
Edan captured images of the terrorists coming into his kibbutz in Kfar Aza as the relentless war between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 7. Shortly after, he and his wife Smadar were dead and the whereabouts of their third child – three-year-old Abigail – remains a mystery.
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"We don't know if Abigail is dead or alive, if she has someone to comfort her. We don't know anything," Curiel told "FOX & Friends First" anchor Todd Piro. It's speculated that terrorists took Abigail back to the Gaza Strip along with hundreds of other Israeli civilians.
Funerals for Roy and Smadar are set to take place Friday. According to a Ynet report Wednesday, more than 50 residents of Edan's kibbutz were killed and 20 others are unaccounted for.
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https://www.foxnews.com/media/reporter-jumps-action-save-slain-friends-children-hamas-attack-absolute-chaos