Israeli rescue workers say more than 200 people were killed and an unspecified number were abducted when Hamas fighters stormed a music festival close to the Gaza Strip, which was in full swing in the early hours of Saturday when the Palestinian militant group launched its biggest attack on Israel in decades.
Thousands of revellers had gathered at the outdoor Tribe of Nova music festival in the Negev desert, a few kilometres from Israel’s militarised border with Gaza, for what was meant to be an all-night dance party coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
Instead, the rave party became a site of deadly chaos when militants from the Gaza Strip suddenly swept the area, gunning down hundreds of people and snatching several more as terrified revellers raced for cover.
The Israeli rescue service Zaka said paramedics had removed “between 200 and 250 people”, or bodies, from the music festival, with the figure expected to rise as teams continued working to clear the area.
“They butchered people in cold blood in an inconceivable way,” Moti Bukjin, a spokesman for Zaka, told AFP. Festival organisers said in a statement on social media they were assisting security forces to help locate missing people who attended the event.
Read moreFollow our live coverage of the fighting in Israel and the Gaza Strip
Video posted to social media showed a young woman being abducted by men on a motorbike as she cried for help. Another man nearby was led away with his hands behind his back. A separate video showed dozens of panicked festivalgoers running through a field, trying to get into their cars, as gunshots rang out.
“They (Hamas militants) started shooting at us at point blank,” said Ester Borochov, 19, who managed to flee in her car before it was hit by bullets and broke down.
“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, me and my friend, for two and a half hours ... before help arrived,” she added. “That's how we survived.”
Festival attendee Shoam Gueta told NBC News that he fled the chaos with a group of 20 people, hiding in the bushes for almost six hours, urging people to remain silent and in place while the attack unfolded. He told the outlet that he saw people being shot as they tried to take cover and that he saw a woman cut with a knife.
“We saw terrorists killing people, burning cars, shouting everywhere,” Gueta told NBC News. “If you just say something, if you make any noise, you’ll be murdered.”
‘9/11 and Pearl Harbour wrapped into one’
The carnage at the music festival was part of a larger assault on Israel carried out by Hamas fighters and their allies, who blew through a fortified border fence surrounding the Gaza Strip before moving into Israeli territory using motorcycles, pickup trucks and even paragliders.
At least 700 people have reportedly been killed in Israel – a staggering toll on a scale the country has not experienced in decades – and more than 400 have been killed in Gaza as Israeli air strikes pound the territory in retaliation.
On Monday, Israelis were still reeling from the breadth, ferocity and surprise of the Hamas assault, which Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, an army spokesman, described as “by far the worst day in Israeli history”.
“Never before have so many Israelis been killed by one single thing, let alone enemy activity in one day,” Conricus added, likening the assault to "a 9/11 and a Pearl Harbour wrapped into one”.
Read moreHamas surprise attack a ‘historic failure’ for Israeli intelligence services
‘Shot like sitting ducks’
As the scale of the attack and the magnitude of the carnage gradually emerged over the weekend, Israeli news programmes were flooded with desperate calls from people seeking information about their loved ones who were missing, said FRANCE 24’s correspondent Irris Makler, reporting from Jerusalem.
“Each one repeated like a mantra, ‘The authorities haven’t contacted me’,” Makler added. “On the ground in Israel there is so much trauma about this, especially all those young people who were at a rave party outdoors and were just shot like sitting ducks.”
Many in Israel expressed outrage that the rave was even allowed to take place so close to Gaza – reflecting the widespread dismay at a catastrophic security failure that comes 50 years after a similar debacle marked the start of the Yom Kippur War.
Speaking to AFP by telephone, Omri Shtivi said the authorities had not contacted his family to provide information or offer help in finding his brother, who went missing after the desert rave. “I just want to be able to hug him,” he said.
In many foreign countries, anxious relatives were also waiting for news of their loved ones who attended the Tribe of Nova festival.
The mother of 22-year-old German-Israeli woman Shani Louk appealed for help finding her daughter after she identified her in a video circulating on social media, due to her tattoos and long black locks with dyed blond tips.
“We have been sent a video in which we can clearly see our daughter, unconscious, in the car of Palestinians driving through the Gaza Strip,” the mother, Ricarda Louk, said in a video message that was picked up by several German media. “I'm asking you to help us if you have any information. Thank you,” she added.
The mother of 26-year-old Briton Jake Marlowe issued a similar plea for her son, saying he had not been heard from since the attack.
“He was doing security at this rave yesterday and called me at 4:30am to say all these rockets were flying over,” Marlowe’s mother told the Jewish News on Sunday. “Then, at about 5:30am, he texted to say 'signal very bad, everything OK, will keep you updated I promise you', and that he loves me.”
(With AP, AFP)
