When the sound of rockets and gunshots broke the silence of the early hours of October 7, Nasreen Yussef looked out the window and saw a menacing sight.
A lone gunman ran straight toward his home in an agricultural moshav in Y’ated, just over two miles from the Gaza border.
The community was one of the first areas infiltrated by Hamas terrorists during the barbaric attack on Israel that left more than 1,200 people dead.
But thanks to this heroic mother of four, more than 120 of her neighbors’ lives were saved that day.
Seeing the attacker, Yussef sprang into action and ran outside, where he grabbed him by the shirt and asked him in Arabic what he was doing there.
Miraculously, perhaps because he appeared to be on drugs and was surprised to hear her speak Arabic, the terrorist did not shoot him and, with the help of an armed neighbor, was able to tie him up in his backyard.
Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, she said: “I told him to look me in the eyes and that I wasn’t afraid of him.” I asked him to tell me where he came from and if there are other people with him. He looked at me and pointed to a greenhouse where other terrorists were hiding.
Yussef then not only captured four more terrorists, but was also able to relay critical information to IDF soldiers about where hundreds of other gunmen were hiding.
Nasreen Yussef, 46, with her husband Eyad and their four children aged between 14, 12, 10 and two and a half years.
Nasreen Yussef seen with the four Hamas terrorists she captured and who were being held in the backyard of her home in Moshav Y’ated. In the photo she and her husband are giving water to the terrorists and behind them – the white greenhouses – is where the other terrorists were hiding.
Thanks to Yussef’s efforts, he was able to provide the IDF with critical information that revealed the location where some of the Hamas terrorists were hiding. The image shows the terrorists captured during Yussef’s initial interrogation.
Yusef had hidden his children in their safe room when he heard the first sound of rockets that morning. Her husband was injured with a broken foot, but he was able to help her protect the captured terrorists in her backyard.
With no electricity, limited food and little running water, the family had no idea of the massacre unfolding nearby. But for the next 24 hours the couple stayed put and tried to provide the IDF with all the information they could gather.
Yussef told the terrorists in Arabic that they would not be harmed if they cooperated and told him where the other people came from.
“I told them, ‘I’ll give you money, I’ll give you gold, I’ll feed you, I’ll make sure you’re clean, and I’ll take you somewhere you can escape so you don’t have to face any repercussions for cooperating,’” she said.
They finally confessed that they had entered through a gap in the fence from Rafai.
He recalled how one of the terrorists named Mohammed tried to stop the others from speaking and told them to “keep quiet.”
During that time alarms and sirens sounded and gunshots and missiles were heard.
Around 6 p.m., one of the terrorists’ cell phone rang and when Yussef answered, the caller identified himself as Elesh, a Hamas leader nicknamed El Nido.
Thinking quickly, she told him that she was an Arab and that she had a hideout where she could protect IDF terrorists. The person she called had no idea that an IDF soldier was standing next to her listening.
He was suspicious, but Yussef kept him on the phone and began to gain his trust.
“I asked him how many more people were coming,” he said.
‘I told him I wanted to help them and told him to tell them to come to the pink house. I told them I’ll make sure there’s food and water, clothes, everything they need and a place to hide.’
Finally, he told him that hundreds more would come from the fence area.
At that point, she asked him how close they were and he told her they were “very.”
Yussef quickly passed this information to IDF soldiers so they could intercept them, while she stayed behind to observe her captors.
She said: ‘We were sitting there in the dark. There was no electricity, no reception, nothing. We couldn’t communicate with anyone. “We were running out of food and water.”
A photo of the bolt cutters the terrorists were armed with and used to cut the moshav fence on the day of the attack, seen on the ground in Yussef’s backyard after his capture.
The documents the terrorists carried that showed they would receive payment for the murders were written in Arabic.
More Hamas receipts showing payments to terrorists
It wasn’t until early Sunday morning that he learned of all the other people who had been killed in the nearby kibbutz and elsewhere in the south.
She also received the heartbreaking news that her best friend, Ido, had been murdered along with other friends who were like family.
“I was trying to stay calm,” he said.
Distraught and overwhelmed, she went outside and began punching one of the terrorists, but an Israeli soldier told her not to interact with them.
Yussef, through tears, said: “They just killed all the people I love.”
It was at that moment that one of the IDF soldiers received a call and learned that his best friend had also been killed.
“He asked me if he could hug me and that’s when he told me that one of his best friends was also murdered,” he said.
After that heartbreaking moment, the soldier urged her to leave with her family and told her it was no longer safe for her to be there.
As she drove away from her home with her four children, she sobbed as she saw the utter devastation of bodies everywhere on the roads and burned cars.
It was later revealed that the five terrorists he captured were armed with rifles, grenades and other weapons.
He saw Hamas and Isis logos on them, and receipts seen by DailyMail.com showed some kind of payment for the murders they were supposed to carry out.
They also kept lists of all the names of the people who lived in the mohav (their names, their occupations, their ages) and they even knew that Yussef had two dogs and a parrot.
Shuki Hasson, Yussef’s translator, told DailyMail.com that three members of the moshav died tragically (a grandfather, a father and a son), but more than 120 lives were saved thanks to Yussef’s actions.
Yussef said he has no explanation why his life was saved and is still struggling to cope with the trauma.
He finally returned home on Wednesday for the first time since October 7.
But for her, the peaceful farming community she once called “heaven” has been destroyed and now “smells like death.”