More than 260 festival-goers have lost their lives during a reported ambush by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova Festival in Israel’s Negev Desert.
The event, which coincided with the end of Israel's week-long Sukkot religious festival, began on Friday, as reported by The Telegraph.
The massacre unfolded near Kibbutz Re’im, with rescuers from the disaster relief agency ZAKA now tirelessly searching for victims. Families from across the world - including those from the UK, the US, and Europe - have been awaiting news on missing loved ones.
BBC News reports that the anticipation surrounding the Supernova Festival was palpable in the preceding weeks. It promised to be an event where "the whole family is about to get together again," as festival organizers enthusiastically shared on social media. However, the aftermath of the event paints a starkly different picture with social media pages now inundated with desperate pleas from people searching for their missing family members.
Witnesses have recounted the harrowing moments. Ortel, a survivor, recalled to the BBC: "They turned off the electricity and suddenly out of nowhere they [militants] come inside with gunfire, opening fire in every direction."
Ortel added that roughly fifty terrorists "arrived in vans, dressed in military uniforms", leading to pandemonium as attendees scrambled for safety.
"They fired bursts, and we reached a point where everyone stopped their vehicles and started running," Ortel continued. "I went into a tree, a bush like this, and they just started spraying people. I saw masses of wounded people thrown around and I'm in a tree and trying to understand what's going on."
Describing the horrifying moments that transpired, Australian attendee, Daniel Moritz, said: "People that we saw, most likely danced with at the party, are dead."
Moritz and his friend Nadav Zik detailed their escape with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The festivalgoer recalled climbing through a hole in a fence in order to reach their car. As they drove away, they say around 30 Hamas militants in pick-up trucks and on motorbikes approached them and started firing machine guns at "full force".
Moritz said: "It was so close to us that we heard the whistles over our head."
They said they feared for the lives of all civilians and worried the many people taken hostage from Israel could be used as “human shields” by Hamas.
"They lost all humanity," Zik said.
Eliav Klein, another survivor, told NBC News: "Everyone just started running in all directions. Nobody knew where to go."
"My friend had to jump off a cliff that was 25 feet high as he was running away from terrorists to save his life," Klein added.
The rescue agency Zaka reports that over 260 bodies of young men and women have been recovered from the festival site.
By Monday, official reports indicated that the conflict had claimed the lives of at least 700 people in Israel and another 400 in Gaza. Families are now resorting to DNA tests, hoping to identify the recovered remains of their loved ones, per The Telegraph.
Speaking to The Telegraph while waiting to provide DNA to authorities at an office near Israel’s Bun Gurion airport, mom Anya Bonget recalled the last phone call she had with her daughter Sofia.
The mom recalled hearing screams in the background, while her daughter told her: "Mommy, they’re killing us." Sofia then hung up her call, but sent her parents a text message an hour later.
Tensions between Israel and Palestine have been ongoing for over 70 years ever since the Nakba took place in 1948, displacing over 700,000 Palestinians who were native to the land. However, things have recently reached a boiling point over the past few weeks as Hamas launched a series of attacks on outside of the Gaza Strip on Saturday, in the biggest escalation in the region in decades, as per the BBC.
Israel launched devastating "retaliatory strikes" in the area after the Prime Minister of Israel said that the state is now at war with Hamas while vowing to inflict an "unprecedented price."
Our thoughts are with all the innocent lives lost caught in the crossfire and we hope that peace will be restored to the area in the near future.
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