Israel music fest: The scene soon shifts as several people are seen fleeing for their lives.
New Delhi:
Several videos and photos have been emerging from Israel depicting horror stories after a surprise attack by Hamas fighters left nearly 700 dead in the country. Now, multiple videos shot by a woman show how a joyful desert music festival soon turned into a fight for survival.
The video compilation begins with many seen dancing and enjoying the Supernova festival in a remote area of southern Israel near the Gaza Strip.
The scene soon shifts as several men and women are seen fleeing for their lives across an open field towards cars as gunshots are heard.
Thousands of young men and women had danced through the night at the festival. Tragedy struck at dawn on Saturday when more than 1,000 Hamas fighters crossed the Gaza border into Israel and overran frontier communities under the cover of a barrage of rocket fire.
In one of the clips, the woman is seen rushing to her car before being forced out of it by the Hamas gunmen. “Please, please… don’t,” the woman is heard pleading to the men.
Someone with a gunshot wound is seen in one of the frames before the next one shows the woman crying and apparently trying to hide from the attackers.
The video compilation ends with several youngsters under the captivity of the Hamas fighters.
Hamas gunmen killed around 250 people who attended the festival in at the weekend, a volunteer who helped collect the bodies said on Monday.
“In the area where the party took place, and at the party itself” it could be estimated that “there were 200-250 bodies,” said Moti Bukjin, a spokesman for the humanitarian NGO Zaka, based on the number of trucks that ferried away the corpses.
Drone footage showed hundreds of cars abandoned in the scramble to flee the massacre at the festival site.
The aftermath of Hamas attack on the music festival in Israel.
At least 200 people were killed, and the number is likely to grow.
This reminds me so much of Bucha. The murders of innocent civilians. The destruction. The fear. Pure terrorism. pic.twitter.com/qhxeKFGbUC
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) October 9, 2023
The footage taken in the aftermath show cars left at the roadside, near Kibbutz Re’im close to Gaza from which Hamas launched its shock assault, many destroyed or pockmarked with bullet impacts.
The music festival became one of the first targets of the gunmen. They stormed Israel on motorbikes, pickup trucks, speed boats and motorised gliders, some of which were seen flying over the festival in a video widely shared online.
Yesterday, a video of 25-year-old woman Noa Argamani reportedly crying for help from the back of a motorbike while being kidnapped spread across social media.
Heartbreaking! Noa was attending a music festival in southern Israel when she was abducted by Hamas terrorists and taken from Israel to Gaza.
She is now a hostage.
Her family has allowed us to show her face in hopes to bring her back. #BringNoaBack#israel#gazapic.twitter.com/XUJcOAzBXq
— India Naftali (@indianaftali) October 7, 2023
The grim 250 assessment means the number of dead at the festival accounts for more than a third of the overall death count from the Hamas assault.
In the ensuing Israeli air strikes, at least 560 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip, according to the health ministry there.