Israelis search for relatives missing after Hamas massacre at music festival
Relatives in Israel are still desperately searching for the missing after Saturday’s bloodbath caused by the Hamas militants at a music festival in the Israeli Negev desert.
The attack on the festival near the border with the Gaza Strip formed part of a wider assault by Palestinian fighters who poured over the border.
Rocket attacks into southern Israel also made Saturday’s massacre the biggest individual loss of civilian life in Israel’s history, with over 700 dead.
Israel has hit back, killing over 500 in airstrikes on Gaza.
According to the ZAKA rescue service, 260 people were killed on the Israeli festival grounds alone.
More than 100 have been taken as hostages into the Gaza Strip, many expected to be from the Supernova electronic music festival.
“I don’t know if my daughter is lying somewhere bleeding, I don’t know if they took her to Gaza, I don’t know if she is suffering,’’ Ahuwa Maizel said on Monday.
The last time she spoke to her daughter Adi was on Saturday morning.
Adi called and said, “There is a massacre here, they are causing a massacre, hundreds of terrorists are shooting.’’
Then, Maizel said, the connection was cut off.
If someone is holding her captive, please, please, stay human.
“We all have the same DNA, we are all just human,’’ Maizel said through tears.
The uncertainty, she said, is unbearable.
She believes innocent people must not be misused for political purposes.
“Let this not become another Holocaust.’’
On social media, survivors shared how they experienced the Hamas raid on the festival.
Arik Nani described how she spent hours trying to get to safety.
“We ran to the fields and heard constant gunfire behind us, we saw people running and falling.
“We hid in the bushes while bullets flew over our heads,’’ said Nani, who will turn 26 this week.
She will celebrate her birthday in sadness but with gratitude.
“I did not think I would make it.’’
Nani said she ran for six hours, dehydrated and with an injury to her hand, until she managed to get to shelter.
Other witnesses have told how they tried to escape in cars and came under fire.
Pictures after the attack showed dozens of burnt-out cars near the festival site.
Others hid in bushes and trees.
“They went from tree to tree shooting. I saw that people were dying everywhere.
“I was very quiet. I didn’t cry, I didn’t do anything,’’ one survivor told the BBC.
Footage from cameras on parked cars also showed the last living moments of injured festival-goers being shot by members of Hamas, a classified as a terrorist organisation by the EU, the U.S., and Israel.
According to Israeli media, numerous women were reportedly raped before being killed or abducted.
