Israel, October 5, 2026: Shortly after 6:30 a.m., Anastasia Stelmachov’s mother called to ask if she was all right. The now 27-year-old paramedic from Bat Yam was nearing the end of a 24-hour shift in the Ariel area when she woke Nashet Nasser, an EMT and ambulance driver.
“I woke up Nashet, my driver, and said, ‘Get up. A war has started,’” she recalls. Nashet, who is Arab-Israeli, leapt awake and both jumped into action.
Soon, the two were instructed to take a bullet-resistant ambulance south. As they approached Ashkelon, they saw rockets and interceptions overhead and columns of smoke across the horizon.
“It looked like a war movie,” Anastasia says.
The ambulance was struck by the blast and fragments of a rocket that had landed nearby, causing it to lurch to one side and nearly overturn. After checking that the ambulance could continue, they kept going.
In Ashkelon, they were instructed to enter Sderot, where terrorists were still active, and evacuate wounded people and residents to a Magen David Adom treatment site at Kochav Michael. On the way, they heard reports of MDA personnel who had been killed or wounded and of people who had been abducted.
“We started talking about what we would do if we were kidnapped. In our minds, we said goodbye to our families,” Anastasia says. “But at no point did we consider turning around and going back to central Israel. Quite the opposite. We wanted to reach the people who needed us, so we pushed the fear aside.”
At Kochav Michael, a moshav nearby, the danger continued. When police reported that terrorists had broken through a checkpoint and were heading toward the area, the MDA crews hid near a gate. At another point, they were dispatched to a woman in labor.
On the way, a police officer stopped them and asked them to take the body of a fellow officer so it would not remain in the street.
“He stood there with tears in his eyes. I understood him, but I was on my way to a woman in labor and couldn’t help. He accepted what I said, but it was hard,” Anastasia recalls.
“Those were moments of sheer terror,” Anastasia recalls.
When the threat passed, they went back into Sderot.
Near the MDA station, they encountered the devastation firsthand.
“We saw bodies on the road. We searched for signs of life, for wounded people in hiding, for anyone we could still save. We found no one alive there.”
Soon afterward, an unmarked civilian vehicle stopped beside them. Inside was a police officer who had been critically wounded during the fighting at the Sderot police station. Anastasia and Nashet treated him and evacuated him to Kochav Michael. They then returned to Sderot, where they found a young soldier with a critical head wound.
“I fought for him the entire way. Rocket alerts and explosions sounded in the background. His condition was extremely serious, and I didn’t want to delay his evacuation, so I took him directly to the hospital.”
Anastasia later learned that the soldier had died. Throughout the day, she and Nashet repeatedly traveled between Sderot and Kochav Michael, bringing wounded people to MDA teams who continued their evacuation to hospitals.
For Anastasia, Nashet was more than the person behind the wheel. He was her partner throughout one of the most frightening days of her life.
“If he hadn’t been with me, the experience would have been completely different,” she says. “I felt safe with him. We worked as a team, the way a team should.”
Their partnership was also part of a larger picture that unfolded across MDA on October 7, as Jewish and Arab medics worked side by side to treat and evacuate the wounded.
Amid the devastation, Anastasia also remembers the kindness of the residents of Kochav Michael, who brought food and drinks to the MDA crews as they worked.
“I will never forget their kindness,” she says. “In the hardest moments, humanity does not disappear.”
Anastasia and Nashet did not return home until the following day.
“There were moments when I thought I wouldn’t make it home,” Anastasia says, “but our commitment to saving lives was stronger than our fear.”
