08 October 2023 , 10:46
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An Israeli festivalgoer has described the horrifying moment when gunmen opened fire in the early hours of Saturday morning.
The outdoor Nova Festival event, in a rural farmland area near the Gaza-Israel border, was supposed to be a time of carefree happiness. Revellers were looking forward to an all-night dance party celebrating the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. But as dawn broke people began hearing rockets whoosing overhead. Gili Yoskovich described to the BBC how she hid under a tree in a field as gunmen roamed about shooting anybody they found. The terrifying attack was just one of multiple locations hit on Saturday morning by one the biggest and most unprecedented assaults inside Israel carried out by the Hamas group.
A video circulating on social media showed hundreds of attendees running across an empty field as gunshots were ringing out all around. The gunmen left multiple people dead and hundreds more are missing with many feared dead. Gili said: "They were standing next to the cars starting to shoot but I realised it was very easy to get killed...because everyone was going everywhere. 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. So I was in the middle [of this field] and I was lying on the floor. It was the second hiding place I found and they were just all around me.
Gili Yoskovich was among hundreds of young people at a dance music festival in southern Israel (BBC)"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. But I was on the one hand breathing, saying: 'OK, I'm going to die. It's OK, just breathe, just close your eyes,' because it was shooting everywhere, it was very very close to me. I was lying there for three hours." In one video that went viral, an Israeli woman and her boyfriend were shown being kidnapped. Noa Argamani, 25, screams "Don't kill me! No, no, no" as she is taken on the back of a fighters motorcycle, with her outstretched arms pointing towards her boyfriend, pleading for her life.
Rockets fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza City are intercepted (AFP via Getty Images)A 26-year-old British man, Jake Marlowe, is now missing after he was working as part of the security team at the festival. His mother, Lisa, told the Jewish News that her son told her, via text, that he was okay and he loved her but she has not heard from him since Saturday.
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At least 500 people have been killed in the war’s first 24 hours with both Israeli and Palestinian numbers rising overnight. The Hamas group launched a massive operation from the Gaza Strip against Israel early on Saturday, leaving Israelis stunned and injuring thousands. Israel has since been pounding Gaza and said it hit 426 targets with entire residential buildings reported to be flattened.