A British survivor has recounted how she saw a Hamas gunman “firing like crazy” at her as she escaped the bloody massacre at an Israeli music festival on Saturday.
More than 260 bodies have been recovered from the festival site in the desert near the Gaza border after the Palestinian militant group unleashed on thousands of young people as they danced in the early dawn.
Survivor Noa Beer has described how she at first didn’t hear the rockets because the music was so loud.
“The next few moments were scary, we shut down the music and yelled to the crowd that there were rockets and everyone should lay down and cover,” the 29-year-old, who was raised in the UK but moved to Tel Aviv, wrote on social media.
She had been on stage filming “her good friend”, a DJ, during his set on Saturday.
“After a few minutes someone on the microphone told us all to start getting out of the party area as quickly as possible,” Ms Beer said.
She was one of the first to reach her car and start driving away from the terrifying attack, but stopped to help a man who had fallen off his motorbike.
“I was opening my door to help the wounded when I saw the first terrorist. He was 20 meters in front of me, firing like crazy straight at me, looking into my eyes,” she wrote on Instagram.
“I yelled at the DJ to get out of the car and take cover. I thought there were soldiers firing back at him but to my horror it was more terrorists, they were all around us, nowhere to go.
“The people who were still alive from the other cars were crawling towards us, injured and scared.”
Ms Beer said she managed to drive away from the scene with four other people in the car, while others trying to escape around her were being “shot dead on the spot”.
She wrote: “It was a split second decision, I yelled out ‘Everyone get in the car!’ and sat in the driver seat.
“I don’t know how my body managed to make the decision to try and drive out of there but that decision saved my own and another four people’s lives.”
Ms Beer described the horrifying moment when she came face to face with a Hamas gunman.
“I drove backwards and turned when I saw I could, and there were more terrorists waiting, cars colliding as the drivers were shot in front of our eyes.
“People [were] trying to run and being shot dead on the spot. It was about 10 seconds that I saw more death than ever in my life.
“I saw him, looking me dead in the eyes and lifting the gun to shoot us the moment I started driving towards him.”
Two of her passengers were injured and she drove them to a hospital. Ms Beer managed to finally travel home “with only a small scratch”.
She wrote: “We all came to celebrate our freedom and love and were left there bleeding and in pain, there are no words to describe the horrors witnessed by us.”
A number of people have commented on Ms Beer’s post, describing her as a “true hero” and “a woman of brave spirit”.
Saturday’s attack on the open-air Tribe of Nova music festival is believed to be the worst civilian massacre in Israeli history, with at least 260 dead and a still undetermined number taken hostage.
Dozens of Hamas militants who had blown through Israel’s heavily fortified separation fence and crossed into the country from Gaza opened fire on about 3,500 young Israelis who had come together for a night of electronic music to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
The party was held in a dusty field outside of Kibbutz Re’im, about 3.3 miles from the wall that separates Gaza from southern Israel.
Videos compiled by Israeli first responders and posted to the social media site Telegram show armed men plunging into the panicked crowd, mowing down fleeing revelers with bursts of automatic fire. Many victims were shot in the back as they ran.
Festival organisers said they were helping Israeli security forces locate attendees who were still missing.
