Anticipation was high before the Supernova music festival.
Thousands of excited festivalgoers didn’t know where the trance party would be held until hours before, when organisers sent out a text message telling people the location: a place called Kibbutz Re’im, around 5km from the Gaza border.
Some 3000 people travelled out to the desert site in southern Israel, about two hours drive south from Tel Aviv, and the party began 10pm on Friday night.
Revellers were still up and dancing at dawn the next morning.
At 6am, the sky was a crisp blue, broken only by a few wispy clouds.
‘They turned off the electricity and suddenly out of nowhere they [militants] come inside with gunfire, opening fire in every direction … Fifty terrorists arrived in vans, dressed in military uniforms’
Soon, at least 260 people would be killed and an unknown number taken hostage. They now could face execution at the hands of Hamas militants.
That initial confusion took a sinister turn as an air raid signal blared, a sound that all Israelis recognise as the signal for incoming rockets.
A voice came over a loud speaker set up on the festival site.
“Guys, we have red alert,” the voice warned. “Red alert.”
Festivalgoer Ortel told Israel’s Channel 12 how the idyllic morning quickly transformed into a bloody ambush, as Hamas militants stormed across the border in an attack described as Israel’s 9/11 or Pearl Harbour moment.
“They turned off the electricity and suddenly out of nowhere they [militants] come inside with gunfire, opening fire in every direction,” Ortel said.
“Fifty terrorists arrived in vans, dressed in military uniforms.
“They fired bursts, and we reached a point where everyone stopped their vehicles and started running. I went into a tree, a bush … and they just started spraying people.
“I saw masses of wounded people thrown around.”
Before the festival, people were told not to bring firearms or knives. They were now trapped, without any defence, in an area offering few hiding places.
Hundreds of attendees ran across the plains of the Negev Desert, trying to escape Hamas gunmen who pursued and hunted them down in vehicles.
“We were hiding and running, hiding and running, in an open field — the worst place you could possibly be in that situation,” said Arik Nani, a resident from Tel Aviv.
Many of the militants, who arrived in trucks and on motorcycles, were wearing body armour and brandished AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
Videos posted to the social media site Telegram showed armed men plunging into the panicked crowd, mowing down fleeing revellers with bursts of automatic fire.
Many victims were shot in the back as they ran.
“There was a traffic jam of cars trying to escape,” festivalgoer Eliav Klein told NBC.
“Everyone just started running in all directions. Nobody knew where to go,” he said.
“My friend had to jump off a cliff that was 25 feet high as he was running away from terrorists to save his life.”
Millet Ben Haim also made a frantic escape.
“I took the car keys from a friend of mine that was really wasted and got as many people in the car as possible and started driving like crazy,” she told The Washington Post.
“The people who stayed, most of them got kidnapped or murdered.”
Gili Yoskovich told the BBC how said she hid under a tree in a pomelo orchard, playing dead for three hours to dodge the gunfire and killings.
“They were going tree by tree and shooting. I saw people were dying all around. I was very quiet. I didn’t cry, I didn’t do anything.”
Read Related Also: Improperly stored remains of nearly 200 people removed from Colorado funeral home in ‘horrific’ scene
“I was … breathing, saying: ‘OK, I’m going to die. It’s OK, just breathe, just close your eyes.'”
Maya Alper hid for hours, buried in a bush, “breathing and praying in every way I knew possible”.
She lay frozen, until she finally heard people approaching, speaking in Hebrew.
Israeli tanks and IDF soldiers had arrived.
Drone footage of the scene taken after the attack showed chaotic lines of cars where drivers had attempted to flee.
Some burned-out vehicles were flipped onto their sides.
Others had bullet holes visible in shattered windows.
Tears for dead as toll rises on both sides
But the horror has not stopped.
Countless families have been left in a ghoulish limbo, with their loved ones missing.
Some are recognising their relatives, alive in unknown locations, in clips now circulating online.
The footage is harrowing; their torment indescribable.
In one video, an Israeli woman and her boyfriend – now identified as Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or – were shown being kidnapped.
In it, a distraught Argamani was hoisted onto the back of a motorcycle and driven away as Or was apprehended and made to walk with his hands behind his back.
Argamani’s father, Yaakov Argamani, yesterday shared through tears that he was praying for his daughter’s safe return.
He explained that he was told about the video of his daughter, 25, while he was desperately searching for her inside an Israeli hospital.
“I went to one of the offices and was informed that she was not injured. While on the phone, her roommate contacted us, and said that there was a video of her on a motorcycle and she was kidnapped and taken to Gaza,” he told Times of Israel.
“I had hoped that he was wrong, that it was not true, and then in the emergency room, a guy approached me and told me there was a video if I wanted to see her.”
“I asked to see and then I saw that it was definitely her. She was so scared, so frightened. I always protected her, and at this very moment I couldn’t.”
Ricarda Louk, Shani’s mother, spoke briefly about the devastating realisation that her daughter’s capture by Hamas militants had been recorded on video.
“I was able to definitely identify our daughter, unconscious, as Palestinians were driving her to Gaza,” she said.
“It looks very bad, but I still have hope.
“I hope that they don’t take bodies for negotiations. I hope that she’s still alive somewhere.
“We don’t have anything else to hope for, so I try to believe.”
The fate of the hostages now looks even more desperate, as Hamas today threatened to kill hostages if airstrikes hit homes in Gaza without warning.
“We declare that we will respond to any targeting of our people who are safe in their homes without warning, with the execution of our civilian hostages, and we will broadcast it with audio and video,” spokesman Abu Obaida said in a statement.
