An elderly man runs past flaming vehicles outside the building housing the Israeli embassy in Cairo, Friday, Sept. 9, 2011. A group of about 30 protesters broke into the embassy Friday and dumped hundreds of documents out of the windows after a day of demonstrations outside the building in which crowds swinging sledge hammers and using their bare hands tore apart the embassy's security wall. (AP Photo)
An elderly man runs past flaming vehicles outside the building housing the Israeli embassy in Cairo, Friday, Sept. 9, 2011. A group of about 30 protesters broke into the embassy Friday and dumped hundreds of documents out of the windows after a day of demonstrations outside the building in which crowds swinging sledge hammers and using their bare hands tore apart the embassy's security wall. (AP Photo)
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a statement in front the media at the Prime Minister's office in Saturday, Sept. 10, 2011 in Jerusalem. The storming of the Israeli embassy by a mob of Egyptian protesters inflicted a "severe injury to the fabric of peace" between the two countries, Netanyahu warned on Saturday, as both sides' leadership tried to contain the worst crisis in ties since their 1979 peace treaty. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Egyptian Army soldiers walk in formation outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Sept. 10, 2011. The storming of the Israeli embassy by a mob of Egyptian protesters inflicted a "severe injury to the fabric of peace" between the two countries, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Saturday. The ambassador and the entire embassy staff except for one deputy ambassador were evacuated from Egypt along with their families in the face of the overnight rampage at the Nile-side embassy in Cairo, when hundreds of protesters tore down a concrete security wall outside the building, set fires in the street and dozens broke into an office of the embassy tossing documents off the balcony to the crowd below.(AP Photo/Ahmed Ali)
JERUSALEM (AP) ? The Israeli guards drew their handguns, convinced it was their final moments as they hid in a barricaded safe room from Egyptian rioters just outside the door, ransacking rooms of the embassy.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials depicted a tense stretch of hours as they watched on security cameras and listened in on conference calls with six Israeli embassy guards caught in the facility as protesters rioted on the streets outside ? and broke in.
In the end, Egyptian commandos made their way in and rescued the six after flurried phone calls between Israeli, American and Egyptian officials to try to resolve the unrest.
In a speech late Saturday, Netanyahu said one of the six, the embassy security chief named Yonatan, spoke by phone to an operations room in Jerusalem from their hiding place.
"The rioters had penetrated the building, penetrated the office, and only one door separated between the rioters and Yonatan and his friends," Netanyahu said. Yonatan told the officials in the operations room, "If something happens to me I ask you tell my parents face to face and not over the phone."
Netanyahu said he told him, "Yonatan, hang in there," promising Israel would do everything it could to get them home.
The 13 hours of rioting that lasted into the early hours Saturday was the worse incident between Egypt and Israel since the two neighbors signed a 1979 peace treaty. The Israeli ambassador, staffers and their families were forced to flee on military planes back to the Jewish state before dawn Saturday. Israel kept one diplomat in Cairo ? albeit in hiding.
The protest began on Friday when hundreds of demonstrators massed outside the Israeli embassy, located on the top floors of a Cairo high-rise overlooking the Nile River. They tore down a concrete security wall that Egyptian authorities erected outside the building after previous protests last month. For several hours, the protesters pounded it with sledgehammers and tore off chunks.
After nightfall, some climbed into the building through a third-floor window and raced up the stairs to the embassy, said 28-year-old protester Mustafa Sayid, who said he was among those who broke in.
The group then took several hours to break through several security doors, he said. Then about 30 burst into an apartment that had been converted into reception offices for the embassy and began trashing its rooms, throwing documents in Hebrew out the balcony to the thousands in the crowd below. Sayid showed a reporter cell phone video footage he said he recorded inside of young men ransacking one of the rooms.
Israeli television stations, citing Israeli officials, said the protesters eventually gained access to two floors of the three-floor embassy, as Netanyahu and other officials in Jerusalem watched the events on surveillance cameras. On one of the floors, the six Israeli embassy guards huddled behind the steel door of a safe room, drawing their handguns when they heard the protesters outside fearing they would break in.
The protesters, who were unarmed, spotted one Israeli man in the area of the reception apartment, said the protester Sayid. They chased him and began beating him up, but by that time some Egyptian police had reached the area. The police pushed the protesters off the Israeli and took him away, Sayid said. The Israeli was apparently not one of the six. The Netanyahu aide said no Israelis were injured in the night's events, so it appeared the man was not seriously harmed.
Several hours later, Egyptian commandos reached the Israeli guards, the aide said.
An Egyptian security official said the commandos were sent after the Israeli ambassador, Yitzhak Levanon, spoke by phone with a member of Egypt's ruling military council and asked for help in evacuating the personnel. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.
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AP correspondent Aya Batrawy contributed to this report from Cairo.
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