Israeli rescue teams say more than 200 people were killed and an unknown number kidnapped when Hamas fighters stormed a music festival near the Gaza Strip, which was in full swing early Saturday when the militant group Palestinian launched its biggest attack against Israel in decades.
Thousands of fans had gathered at the open-air “Tribe of Nova” music festival in the Negev Desert, just a few miles from Israel’s militarized border with Gaza, and it was supposed to be an all-night party. night, coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
Instead, the party descended into deadly chaos when militants from the Gaza Strip suddenly invaded the area, gunning down hundreds of people and kidnapping several more as terrified attendees ran for cover.
Israel’s Zaka rescue service said paramedics had removed “between 200 and 250” bodies from the music festival and that the number was expected to rise, as crews continued to work to clear the area.
“They have massacred people in cold blood in an inconceivable way,” Moti Bukjin, Zaka’s spokesman, told AFP. Festival organizers said in a statement on social media that they were working with security forces to help locate missing people who attended the event.
A video posted on social media showed a young woman kidnapped by men on a motorcycle, while she screamed for help. Another man who was near her was carried away with his hands behind his back. Another video showed dozens of panicked festival-goers running across a field, trying to get into their vehicles, as gunshots rang out.
⏯️ #Video | During a peace music festival held in the middle of the desert in southern Israel, near the border with the Gaza Strip, the moment the Hamas attack began was captured pic.twitter.com/lLo56ugWfB
— Indigo Report (@Indigo_Report) October 8, 2023
“They started shooting at us at point-blank range,” said Ester Borochov, 19, who managed to flee in her car before being hit by bullets.
“A young man took us in his jeep. They shot him, he lost consciousness and his car overturned,” Borochov told Israel’s Channel 12. “We played dead, my friend and I, for two and a half hours… before help arrived,” he added. “This is how we survive.”
Festival attendee Shoam Gueta told NBC News that he fled the chaos with a group of 20 people, hiding in the bushes for nearly six hours, urging people to remain silent and in place as the attack unfolded. He said that he saw how people were shot when they tried to take cover.
“We saw terrorists killing people, burning cars, screaming everywhere,” Gueta told NBC News. “If you said something, if you made a noise, they would kill you.”
‘9/11 and Pearl Harbor in one’
The music festival massacre was part of a broader attack on Israel by Hamas fighters and their allies, who breached the fortified border fence surrounding the Gaza Strip before entering Israeli territory using motorcycles, pickup trucks and even paragliders.
At least 900 people have reportedly died in Israel, a staggering number the country has not experienced in decades, and more than 680 have died in Gaza, where Israeli aircraft have bombed the territory in retaliation.
On Monday, Israelis were still shocked by the breadth, ferocity and surprise of the Hamas assault, which Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an army spokesman, described as “by far the worst day in Israel’s history.”
“Never before have so many Israelis died from a single cause, much less from enemy activity in a single day,” Conricus added, comparing the assault to “9/11 and Pearl Harbor rolled into one.”
Shot down like easy targets
As the scale of the attack and the magnitude of the carnage came to light over the weekend, Israeli news outlets were inundated with desperate calls from people seeking information about their missing loved ones, the France 24 correspondent said. in English, Irris Makler, reporting from Jerusalem.
“Each one repeated like a mantra: ‘The authorities have not contacted me,'” Makler added. “On the ground in Israel there is a lot of trauma from this, especially all those young people who were at a party rave in the open air and were shot at as easy targets.
Many Israelis expressed outrage that the celebration was allowed so close to Gaza, reflecting widespread dismay over a catastrophic security failure that comes 50 years after a similar debacle marked the start of the Yom War. Kippur.
Speaking by telephone to AFP, Omri Shtivi said the authorities had not contacted his family to provide information or offer help in finding his brother, who disappeared after the raid in the desert. “I just want to be able to hug him,” he said.
In many foreign countries, anxious family members were also awaiting news of their loved ones who attended Tribe of Nova.
The mother of Shani Louk, a 22-year-old German-Israeli woman, asked for help to find her daughter after having identified her in a video that circulated on social networks, due to her tattoos and her long black hair with dyed ends. blond.
“They have sent us a video in which we can clearly see our daughter, unconscious, in the car of some Palestinians who are driving through the Gaza Strip,” said the mother, Ricarda Louk, in a video message that was picked up by several German media. “I ask you to help us if you have any information. Thank you,” she added.
The mother of Briton Jake Marlowe, 26, launched a similar plea for her son, saying he had not been heard from since the attack.
“Yesterday I was a security guard at a party rave and he called me at 4:30 in the morning to tell me that rockets were flying,” Marlowe’s mother told the ‘Jewish News’ on Sunday. “Then around 5:30 in the morning, she texted me to say ‘very bad sign, everything is fine, I’ll keep you posted I promise,’ and that she loves me.”
Adapted from its English original
With AP, AFP
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