She adds that sometimes the rescuers are attacked themselves, so they wear helmets, gloves and padding.

Aalaam Wassef, a member of the extraction team, says the rescues take an emotional toll on the rescuers.

“Life gets sucked out of you,” Wassef says. “It’s terrifying.”

The volunteer adds that compounding the viciousness of the attacks is how victims are treated by Egyptian authorities. He recalls a case last Tuesday of a young woman in her 20’s who was dragged into the subway station at Tahrir Square. There, she was stripped and gang-raped.

Afterward, she was taken to the police station, where the traumatized woman demanded her attackers be punished, Wassef.

“And she was presented to a doctor who wanted to practice a virginity test in the police station itself,” he says. “That led this young woman to completely break down in tears.”