“We had nowhere to hide because we were in the open. Everyone panicked and started taking their things,” Tal Gible, one of the participants of the Supernova festival in southern Israel, which was attacked by terrorists from the Palestinian radical movement Hamas, told CNN.
According to her, people quickly started fleeing the festival en masse in cars, but the roads were blocked and no one could move. At that moment, a shot rang out.
Another participant, Ester Borochová, also tried to drive away, but someone ran into her, so she had to continue on foot. After a while, a young man drove by and told her to get in. Shortly after, someone shot him. Ester then pretended to be dead for hours before being rescued by the Israeli army, BBC News reported.
Introductory video Social media footage released by analysts verifying the authenticity of the footage shows the aftermath of the attack and wrecked cars along the road as people tried to flee the attackers.
The Israeli rescue service Zaka found about 260 bodies of victims at the site of the music festival by Sunday evening, as reported by the American station CNN. A number of foreigners, including several Americans, are among the dead, according to authorities. The gunmen also took an unknown number of participants hostage.
A story from the festival
The 25-year-old Israeli student was with friends at a music festival near the Gaza Strip when the radical Hamas movement launched a large-scale and, according to local media, surprise attack on Israel. They dragged her from the place by force and are now holding her hostage.
“It was so scary and we didn’t know where to go to avoid meeting those bad people,” Gibley said, adding that she is still trying to connect with her friends who were also at the festival and whom she has not seen since, according to CNN. He doesn’t know if they made it to safety or if they were captured.
The Supernova Festival was an all-night dance party celebrating the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. It was held at Kibbutz Reim in a rural agricultural area near the Gaza border. The festival included three stages, a campsite, a bar and a dining hall. It is apparently the site of the worst massacre during the weekend attack by Hamas against Israel.
The most important information
- Israel has compared the large-scale attack launched by the Palestinian radical movement Hamas on Saturday morning to the terrorist attack on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. The army talks about “the worst day in Israeli history”.
- The Israeli army even two days after the start of the attack continues to fight Hamas members in “seven or eight” locations outside Gaza, the military announced.
- Battlefield: The Israeli army continues its airstrikes on Hamas positions. Planes, helicopters and artillery hit 500 targets in the Gaza Strip on Monday night alone, according to Israel.
- Losses: Israel reports at least 700 dead, over 2,100 wounded and dozens captured by Hamas. / Palestinians report over 400 dead so far, over 2300 injured.
- Kidnappings: The exact number is unknown, it is certain that Hamas dragged over 100 Israelis to the Gaza Strip – men, women and children. They are holding them hostage.
- Tales: Abduction from a music festival (here), Czechs in Israel (here).
- By painting: Here you will find the first photos from the site and a photo gallery that captures the first day of the war. We also published a video of the Israeli retaliatory action, the call for backup and the drone attack on the ambulance.
- Podcast 5:59 with columnist Natasha Dudinski, who lives in Jerusalem: “It’s a colossal failure, Israel is in complete shock.”
