In the deadliest day since the Holocaust, at least 900 Israelis were killed in the all-out Hamas offensive on Saturday. The biggest carnage took place at a music festival in southern Israel where at least 260 were killed and dozens were abducted.
The emerging testimonies detail how the lives of revellers, who were having the time of their life dancing and singing as DJs played tracks after tracks, changed forever shortly after daybreak. First, they heard the rockets swooshing overhead and saw the Israeli air defence missiles racing to intercept them. Then, even as the partying men and women struggled to make sense of the commotion, came the Hamas attackers on bikes, trucks, and on foot. Then, the carnage began.
The survivors say they saw their friends dying and being taken away. They say they hid between corpses of people with whom they were partying just moments away. They say the attackers positioned themselves near the parking area and the designated bomb shelters, so that the 'safe areas' became easy targets.
Some of the most shocking footage that has so far emerged from Israel and has shocked the national conscience has come from the desert music festival, such as of a woman identified as a German tourist who was taken as hostage from the festival to Gaza. There, the seemingly dead woman was paraded in a semi-naked state in the back of a Hamas truck amid celebratory cheers. Then, another woman is seen being taken away on a two-wheeler as a hostage. Her whereabouts are unknown.
Here is how the carnage at the Supernova Music Festival at Re'im in unfolded. The testimonies contain details of murders, abductions, and sexual assaults.
How carnage began at Supernova Music Festival
There were around 3-4,000 revellers at the Supernova Music Festival that began on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday and was set to continue till Saturday evening. But the party never reached the afternoon.
Shortly after the dawn, as the electronic psytrance dance music blared and revellers danced, the first rockets struck the area. Automatic fire began and, soon, armed Hamas attackers surrounded the party. Bullets chased the revellers as they fled in all directions — some into the open desert or surrounding orchards, some towards the parking to shelter or escape in their cars, or some just ran aimlessly as their mind dazed with nightlong revelry could not immediately make sense of events.
"Around 6:30 in the morning we started hearing explosions. We went out of the backstage and we saw a full bombardment everywhere. It was hundreds of rockets and mortars flying from everywhere and explosions all around us," said Raz Gaster to Billboard, one of the organisers of the event who witnessed the carnage, adding that machine guns, rifles, hand-grenades, and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) were all used in the attack on the rave.
"People were hiding in ditches, hiding in bushes, hiding in the woods, hiding wherever you can think of," said Gaster, adding the Hamas attackers "just slaughtered whoever they could".
Several dozens of charred and bullet-riddled cars clutter the dance party venue. As people rushed to their cars to shelter or escape, the road got clogged, according to accounts available. The clogging partially happened as police also tried to hold off the attackers. The clogged parking and road became a major site of carnage as is evident from the footage of charred cars.
"While rockets rained down, revellers said, militants converged on the festival site while others waited near bomb shelters, gunning down people who were seeking refuge. Many of the militants, who arrived in trucks and on motorcycles, were wearing body armour and brandishing AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades," reported The Associated Press (AP), adding that videos of first responders at the site show attackers mowing down fleeing revellers and shooting many of them in the back with automatic weapons.
Alper, a reveller at the site, told AP that she jumped into her car and raced for the road as the attack began, but she had to flee as they were intercepted at the clogged road by Hamas attackers.
"The roar of explosions, hysterical screams and automatic gunfire felt closer the further she drove. When a man just metres away shouted “God is great!", Alper and her new companions sprung out of the car and sprinted through open fields toward a mass of bushes. Alper felt a bullet whiz past her left ear. Aware the gunmen would outrun her, she plunged into a tangle of shrubs. Peering through thorns, she said she saw one of her passengers, the girl who had lost her friend, shriek and collapse as a gunman stood over her limp body, grinning," reported AP.
Alper told AP, "I can't even explain the energy they (the militants) had. It was so clear they didn't see us as human beings. They looked at us with pure, pure hate."
For hours, Alper and thousands like her hid in the shrubs and orchards around the festival venue as the Hamas attackers searched for them and bundled the hostages. Some were executed on the spot, as per accounts. Alper said she was rescued by the Israeli military who arrived at the site in tanks. The girl who had jumped into her car as she escaped was never seen again and she suspected she was taken to Gaza, said Alper.
Nowhere to hide as Hamas searched to kill
The desert venue became the perfect spot for the carnage of Hamas. The flat expanse of the desert meant there was little cover to hide.
"We didn’t even have any place to hide because we were at [an] open space. Everyone got so panicked and started to take their stuff," Tab Gibly told CNN. "
Gibly told CNN she ran to the forest and eventually got into a car for escape. She saw a number of dead and injured people on roadside, but said one scene in particular stuck with her: a concertgoer shot dead outside a van and another killed in the passenger seat.
"It was so terrifying and we didn’t know where to drive to not meet those evil … people. I have a lot of friends that got lost at the forest for a lot of hours and got shot like it was a range," said Gibly.
"We were hiding and running, hiding and running, in an open field — the worst place you could possibly be in that situation. For a country where everyone in these circles knows everyone, this is a trauma like I could never imagine," said Arik Nani to AP.
One survivor, opting to be anonymous, told Tablet Magazine that women were also raped at the site. The survivor further said that some of the attackers appeared to be as young as 16 or 17.
"They’re kids, but they’re young men already, and they’re holding this guy, and he looks as his girlfriend is being mounted on a bike and driven away from him. God knows what she’s going to experience … Women have been raped at the area of the rave next to their friends bodies, dead bodies," said this survivor, with the magazine further reporting that "several of these rape victims appear to have been later executed".
Another survivor told the magazine they saw mutilated bodies of women at the site. Another survivor told BBC News that the attackers used sniper rifles and went door-to-door to target survivors in hiding. An analysis by the BBC of footage from the site also noted that some were shot at point blank range at the venue, corroborating accounts of executions by Hamas.
"In the opening frame of the footage a motionless body is seen lying curled up next to a car...And then the body by the car moves. The man, who appears to have been playing dead, stirs. He raises his head to see if the coast is clear. It's a fatal error. Seconds later, another militant jogs into frame and shoots him in the head at point blank range and walks away," reports BBC about one of the many videos from the site.
