The techno beat suddenly gave way to explosions and gunshots. Among the first places targeted at the launch of the surprise attack carried out in Israel by Hamas fighters on Saturday October 7 was a festival, Tribe of Nova, which brought together several hundred Israelis and foreigners, in a site less than a half-hour drive from the Gaza-Israel border. The death toll stands at 260, emergency services announced early Sunday evening.
This first Israeli edition of the Brazilian psytrance music festival “Universo Parallo” was organized outdoors, in the middle of a rural agricultural area around the Kibbutz of Reim, less than six kilometers from the borders of the Gaza Strip, in the southern Israel. From Friday evening to Saturday afternoon, festival-goers were expected to attend sets by DJs from all over the world. The evening, aimed more at a young audience, was announced as allowing them to celebrate the Jewish festival of Sukkot.
“The music stopped and there was a rocket siren”
In a video filmed in the early morning and shared on TikTok by a festival-goer, we can see motorized paragliders in the sky – those of Hamas whose armed men were preparing to launch their offensive. At the festival site, the first rocket fire was heard around 6:30 a.m., according to a participant testifying to CNN. Another, named Ortal and interviewed by the Israeli television channel Channel 12, reports: “The music stopped and there was a rocket siren.” A third, on the microphone of the same channel, says that at first glance, the sound of the rocket “felt like he was part of the music”. But everyone quickly realized that they were being targeted by an attack. “I realized what was happening, that we were in the worst possible place – in a crowd of people in the middle of flat land – and that we needed to get out of there immediately”writes Arad Fruchter, who came from the Tel Aviv region to attend the festival, in his testimony published on the media site The Free Press. “My friends and I got in our car and drove as fast as we could”he continues.
In the half hour that followed, everyone present at the site fled in their cars, causing a traffic jam and blocking the surrounding roads. It was then that Hamas fighters, traveling on motorcycles, arrived on site and began shooting at cars. Blocked, hundreds of festival-goers decided to abandon their vehicles and run for shelter. In images posted on social media, some of which were initially misrepresented as showing Israeli settlers fleeing their homes, hundreds of panicked participants are seen running across fields or along a road, and we hear gunshots echoing in the background. Some festival-goers found refuge a little further away in ditches or in one of the rare wooded areas, taking advantage of the bushes to camouflage themselves.
While the police officers present to ensure the security of the event were insufficient in number to counter the offensive of the Hamas men, it was not until the arrival of the Israeli army that the gunfire stopped and the first evacuations are carried out.
Interviewed by Reuters, Esther Borochov reported finding refuge with a friend in the vehicle of a young man, shot at point blank range a few moments later. The two young women were then rescued by Israeli soldiers, after waiting in the car pretending to be dead. Another participant, Adam Barel relates on a daily basis Haaretz not having moved for about five hours, hiding in the bushes, before the army appeared. The Libération correspondent on site also collected Yaara’s testimony: “I waited three hours, my friend was injured in the hip, he died before my eyes”. As for Gili Yoskovich, she told the BBC how she hid in a grapefruit orchard: “They were going from tree to tree and shooting. They were shooting everywhere. On two sides. I saw people dying all around. I was very calm. I didn’t cry, I didn’t do anything.”
According to Israeli media, dozens of revelers have since been driven, in vehicles dispatched by local authorities, to the town of Ofaqim, located a little further inland in the south of the country, where their families are waiting for them. and their friends. Some injured people were evacuated to hospitals in the region, including the Soroka medical center in Beer Sheva, reports the Israeli news site Ynet.
An unconscious woman lying in a pickup truck
At the end of Sunday afternoon, many festival-goers were missing. Among those who had been rescued or located, a good number reported having remained hidden on the site for several hours. Social media continued to fill with messages from Israelis hoping to find information about loved ones who disappeared after taking part in the festival (https://twitter.com/NadavOfek/status/1710594285211422957 Or https://twitter.com/SapirCo29813464/status/1710626865314934893 For example). Footage filmed by residents was interpreted as showing dozens of survivors who had managed to reach Netivot, the nearest town, but police eventually revealed that they were a group of Thai workers.
On the Channel 12 website, there was a list of festival-goers found alive in the area of Be’eri, a kibbutz neighboring Réïm. For its part, the organizer of the event, the NOVA collective, shared in its Instagram story a form intended for relatives of the missing, whose information will be transmitted to the police and the army. The organizer announced that he would join “in mourning for the families of the missing and murdered people”.
As of Saturday evening, Channel 12 claimed that dozens of bodies had been located, and a journalist present at the scene declared that they were being taken away for identification. For his part, Yaniv, an emergency doctor requisitioned to intervene in the festival area, spoke on the public channel Kan News “a massacre” : “There are at least 200 Israeli bodies in the area where I was”.
Several X accounts (ex-Twitter) then relayed this count at the end of Sunday afternoon, affirming that, according to “Israeli sources” (not specified), “200 bodies” even “at least 250 bodies” had been found on the festival site. Shortly before 9 p.m., this figure was confirmed: 260 lifeless bodies were discovered on the scene by rescue teams.
One of the first victims identified due to a very shocking video which circulated very soon after the carnage. We see the inanimate and disarticulated body of a woman, lying in a pick-up on board which are fighters, one of whom has wrapped his leg around the waist of this young woman. A man spits on his head as the vehicle drives off. https://twitter.com/carvifolia/status/1710734605999845794 revealed that she is a German-Israeli woman named Shani Louk. On Saturday, his cousin confirmed to Washington Post that she was participating in the festival.
More than half of Israeli civilian hostages believed to be festival-goers
At the end of the afternoon, no French people appeared on the list of people wanted. Two DJs of French nationality were scheduled on one of the festival stages. One of them, Radikal Moodz, deplores “a horrible episode” near CheckNews : “I was extremely lucky not to have had to face the [combattants du Hamas] because I had not yet arrived at the festival site. But several of my friends are dead or missing.”
Several dozen festival-goers were also reportedly taken hostage. According to the French embassy in Israel, at least 150 Israelis are being held hostage by Hamas forces. According to the elements of which Release available then, more than half of these civilian hostages would be festival-goers. Shortly before 11 p.m. on Sunday, Hamas claimed that 130 Israeli hostages were being held in Gaza.
Late Sunday afternoon, among those identified as having been kidnapped during the assault targeting festival-goers were an Israeli woman and her boyfriend, identified as Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or. https://twitter.com/dom_lucre/status/1710731461504999718 shows Noa being taken on the back of a motorcycle as she begs for help, while Avinatan, surrounded by a group of men, is forced to walk with his hands behind his back. His brother Moshe Or, who came across these images after some research on social media, confirmed their identity to Israeli media. And Noa Argamani’s father spoke on television, hoping to find his daughter safe and sound.
EDIT: updated at 9:10 p.m. with addition of the discovery of 260 bodies by emergency services
