Foreign countries|Hamas attack
Hamas made an exceptionally brutal attack on the festival organized in the desert on Saturday.
A music festival In the Negev desert, it was half past seven in the morning when Hamas began its attack on Israel. People danced in the sky as Hamas fired missiles across the border.
One festival-goer told the American for The New Yorker, that he saw the rockets before he heard them. The music was so loud. Then a group of police interrupted the party and warned of attacks.
The electricity went out and the music stopped. At first, the police told people to take cover on the ground, but after a few minutes told them to flee the festival area.
Traffic was congested as people tried to drive to safety.
About 20-30 minutes after the rocket attacks started, Hamas fighters arrived on the scene on motorcycles and pick-up trucks. They shot people fleeing the festival in their cars.
Moni abandoned their vehicle in desperation and tried to run away. Cars were left lying on the side of the road.
Festival was organized at the end of Sukkot, the Jewish leaf feast that ended on Friday. One who was there evaluates Israel’s Yleisradiothat around 3,000 people participated in the event.
A dance music festival celebrating “friendship, love and eternal freedom” was one of the first targets of the Hamas attack on Saturday.
Eyewitnesses have described the attack in several media as well planned. According to them, the armed groups arrived at the festival area in pre-coordinated formations.
The gunmen also used blatant violence, firing on civilians from all directions. Hamas fighters also shot people at close range, just a meter away, said a person present For The New Yorker.
“They were executions. We were like ducks on a shooting range,” he said.
According to the Israeli search and rescue organization Zaka, 260 bodies were collected from the scene. Hamas fighters also took hostages from the festival area. Many were injured.
Plenty of videos have been filmed from the festival area, which have been shared on social media. The HS fact checker has checked the videos published in this story.
Festival was organized near Re’im, about five kilometers from the border of the Gaza Strip. The venue changed at the very last minute a couple of days before the festival started, says the American Billboard magazine.
One festival visitor said that the participants were prepared for the risk of attacks. The arrival of Hamas fighters was instead a complete shock.
People had nowhere to run as the festival was held in the desert, one woman said for the American CNN channel. Some of the festival guests told the media that they had fled to the shelter of the area’s forests, ditches and nearby orchards. The woman hiding in the pomelo orchard told For the British Broadcasting Company BBCthat Hamas fighters inspected the plantation tree by tree, shooting the people they found.
Like a four- to five-hour horror movie, one survivor described his experience in an interview with the N12 channel.
It took five hours for the Israeli army to arrive at the venue, one festival visitor told the Israeli For Haaretz newspaper. Until then, both the festival guests and the police who worked at the festival hid under the cover of the vegetation. People also hid in ditches.
In the city of Sderot, for example, locals also complained about how long it took the Israeli Defense Forces to arrive, reported Haaretz.
In total Hamas has already killed at least 700 people in Israel, of which 44 were soldiers, Israeli media say, citing the country’s rescue services. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have also said they have 130 Israeli hostages, including high-ranking military officials.
The photo, taken in Khan Youn, Gaza Strip, is said to show a kidnapped Israeli woman on the back of a car.
According to a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, Hamas fighters penetrated up to 22 targets in southern Israel on Saturday morning. Some of these villages were located as far as 24 kilometers from the Gaza border.
The spokesman also said that Hamas fighters took hostages from the village of Be’er and the town of Ofakim.
An Israeli official said that Israeli security forces have killed 400 fighters and taken dozens of prisoners, reports the news agency AP. For his part, Gaza’s health minister says that 413 people have died in the area, including 78 children and 41 women.
According to the news agency19 members of the same Palestinian family died in one Israeli airstrike on a refugee camp in Gaza.
About 2,000 people have been injured on both sides.
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