LAST UPDATE | 9 Oct 2023
HAMAS MILITANTS KILLED around 250 people who attended an outdoor music festival in an Israeli community near Gaza at the weekend, a volunteer who helped collect the bodies said today.
The Supernova music festival took place on Saturday near Kibbutz Re’im, a remote area in southern Israel close to Gaza.
Thousands are estimated to have been in attendance when Hamas militants 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.
Festival-goers were seen fleeing for their lives across an open field towards cars as gunshots were heard, in other footage that AFP was unable to immediately verify.
While many were killed, at least 100 people were taken hostage, with a video of 25-year-old woman, Noa Argamani, reportedly crying for help from the back of a motorbike while being kidnapped spreading across social media.
“They just went and gunned down people in the cars,” Moti Bukjin, a spokesman for the humanitarian organisation Zaka, which helped to recover bodies from the area, told AFP.
The religious NGO specialises in collecting bodies in accordance with Jewish law.
“In the area where the party took place, and at the party itself” he estimated that “there were 200-250 bodies,” based on the number of trucks used to ferry away the corpses.
That grim assessment means the number of dead at the festival accounts for more than a third of the overall death toll from the Hamas assault, which the Israeli army put at over 700.
However, the total figure of those killed at the festival is expected to be higher as other paramedic teams work in the area.
In the ensuing Israeli air strikes, at least 560 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip, according to the health ministry there.
Bukjin said he had been a volunteer at Zaka for 28 years and “thought I reached my end” after working at a deadly stampede in Meron during a religious festival two years ago.
“I thought it was the end of the world” but “it turns out things can be much, much worse,” he said in a phone call with AFP as he prepared to continue the recovery work for Zaka.
“They butchered people in cold blood in an inconceivable way,” he said of what he saw at the site of the music festival.
On a major road nearby, “there were cars on the side of the road, an overturned car, a car on its side –- in each car there were two or three bodies or just one body shot dead,” he said.
Aerial footage obtained by AFP of the aftermath of the attack showed dozens of burned-out cars on the side of the road leading out from the festival site.
Bukjin said all the bodies he handled were of people who had been shot dead, with the militants killing them by shooting them in the head or by torching their cars.
“What’s shocking is that they confirmed the people they shot were dead. They had so much time till the security forces got there. Some of the cars they burnt with people inside,” he said.
“On some we saw a gunshot to the head, a bullet to the head, a bullet in the chin. It’s not randomly spraying bullets and hoping they hit.”
Festival-goers who tried to escape on foot were among the dead.
“Some of the bodies were in ditches, they were shot trying to flee and fell into the ditches on the side of the road,” he said.
The conversation with Bukjin took place as the army announced its forces had regained control of the communities near Gaza from Hamas fighters.
Bukjin said that only now would Zaka begin collecting the bodies from those communities, including the elderly, children and babies.
“It’s going to be a rough day,” he said gravely.
One festivalgoer has described to the BBC how she hid under a tree in a nearby field as gunmen continued their attacks.
“The terrorists were coming from four or five places,” Gili Yoskovich said. “So we didn’t know whether to go here, so then I got into my car again and I drove a little bit more.
“Some people were shooting at me. I left the car and started to run, I saw a place with many pomelo trees and I went there.”
She added: “They were going tree by tree and shooting. Everywhere. From two sides. I saw people were dying all around. I was very quiet. I didn’t cry, I didn’t do anything.”
22-year-old Irish-Israeli woman Kim Damti is among those who remains unaccounted for following the attack on the music festival.
Her mother Jennifer has appealed for information on her daughter’s whereabouts, telling US outlet ABC News: “All I can think about is where she is, if she’s suffering, if she’s still alive. I just want her back.”
Jake Marlowe, 26, who moved to Israel from Britain two years ago, is believed to have been taken hostage while providing security at the music festival.
His mother Lisa told the Jewish News site that he called her “to say all these rockets were flying over,” and then later to tell her “signal very bad, everything OK, will keep you updated I promise you”.
Israel’s ambassador to Britain said there was one British citizen in Gaza, without naming the person.
Meanwhile, Brazil’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that three dual Brazilian-Israeli nationals were missing after attending the music festival and a fourth was being treated in hospital.
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