It was a wise decision to bring Rabin directly to the nearby hospital in his limousine, rather than wait for an ambulance, he said.

Rabin was dressed, unconscious, and bleeding heavily from the abdomen when he arrived. Gutman said Rabin probably lost consciousness very quickly after being hit by two dum-dum bullets.

Gutman and his team inserted a tracheal tube and respirated him. They inserted a chest drain and administered drugs. His pulse weakly restored, Rabin was rushed 10 minutes after arrival to an operating room, where Gutman and others surgeons tried to halt the bleeding caused by damage to his lungs, spleen, tissues surrounding the heart, and spinal column.

During the surgery, which took more than an hour, doctors gave Rabin 22 pints of blood, but couldn't save him. "If he had been a 20-year-old man, maybe he would have had a chance of survival, but even that would have been very unlikely," Gutman said.