Cars are seen on fire following a rocket attack from the Gaza Strip in Ashkelon, southern Israel, on Oct. 7, 2023.Photo:AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty
AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty
When sirens interrupted an electronic music festival in Israel over the weekend, many attendees were unaware that a short distance away, missiles from Gaza were raining down on civilians. Then vans pulled up, and Hamas militants began firing into the crowd.
At least 260 attendees were killed at the Tribe of Nova music festival. Now, survivors of the mass casualty incident are beginning to describe what happened in the Negev desert on Saturday morning, as fighting between Israel and the Hamas-controlled Gaza continues.
Maya Alper, a 25-year-old volunteer, was passing out free vodka shots to party-goers who reused their cups and picking up trash, but just after 6 a.m. local time, air raid sirens began blaring over the festival’s music as rockets shot overhead,AP Newsreports.
Alper told AP that she ran for her car, but as she attempted to exit, she found crowds of panic-stricken men and women who were also trying to escape. The young volunteer pulled a few festival-goers into her vehicle, including a man who was searching for his wife and a woman who’d watched a Hamas gunman fatally shoot her best friend.
“I can’t even explain the energy they [the militants] had, it was so clear they didn’t see us as human beings,” said Alper. “They looked at us with pure, pure hate.”
“Every time I thought of anger, or fear or revenge, I breathed it out,” saidAlper. “I tried to think of what I was grateful for — the bush that hid me so well that even birds landed on it, the birds that were still singing, the sky that was so blue.”
“This is not just war. This is hell,” Alper said. “But in that hell I still feel that somehow, we can choose to act out of love, and not just fear.”
Burnt out vehicles in Ashkelon, Israel, are pictured following a rocket attack from the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023.AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty
Arik Nani, a 26-year-old who went to the festival to celebrate his birthday, ended up fleeing the massacre. “I heard shots from every direction, they were firing at us from both sides," he toldReuters. “Everyone was running and didn’t know what to do. It was total chaos.”
Speaking to AP, Nani said, “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.”
Israeli forces establish heavily armed control points along the Gaza border.Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency via Getty
Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency via Getty
Gal Levy, a 22-year-old who was shot in both legs, shared withCBS Newsthat everyone immediately panicked when violence broke out at the festival. “We heard the bullets… everybody started running.”
He shared that a “terrorist” demanded he give his phone and money as he stood “above [him] with a gun.” Levy lost two liters of blood and told CBS he was “really sure” that while he was hiding he was going to die. He’s not certain if he’ll be able to walk again.
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Festival-goer Zohar Maariv shared withReutersthat “at one stage me and a friend got into a car with people we didn’t know and we just jumped into a car with lots of people and started to drive.” The 23-year-old explained that once the car came under fire, she and the other passengers ran on foot and hid for hours. Soon they were rescued, but her boyfriend remained missing.
“Only this morning did I understand the scale of what happened, that what had happened was not only at the party, it’s the whole south is on fire,” Maariv said.
source: people.com
