HE THREW BACK THE FIRST SEVEN HAMAS GRENADES... THE EIGHTH KILLED HIM

LIGHT hits the wall inside the entrance to a concrete bomb shelter no bigger than a bus stop. In the shadows inside, 27 people are packed together like sardines, hiding and afraid. Less than an hour earlier the young men and women had been welcoming dawn at the Nova music festival in Israel, a few miles from the Gaza border.

- By Richard Ashmore

It is around 8am on October 7, 2023, and Hamas terrorists have just launched a surprise attack on Israeli kibbutz farms and the festival site, killing civilians indiscriminately and at will.

Hamas are now outside the shelter where these festival-goers have fled. The militants have just murdered a Bedouin security guard. He tried to plead with them that those inside the tiny building were unarmed, which they are, but Hamas don't care. They want to kill as many people as possible.

Standing just inside the entrance to the bomb shelter is 22-year-old off-duty Israeli soldier Aner Shapira. In a remarkable photo taken by someone laying on the floor behind him, Aner is silhouetted by the sun's rays entering the shelter as he stands alone, wearing just shorts, T-shirt and sandals, about to face a terrorist attack.

To Aner's right written on the missile shelter walls in Hebrew is the word "unprotected", a simple instruction to those sheltering from missiles that the entrance is not a safe place to stand. Behind a red line and Aner and above the rest of the people hiding on the floor is the word "protected".

The first grenade lands in the shelter. Aner begins to protect.