At least 260 people were killed in a “massacre’’ at an Israeli music fest, which included Israeli officers getting blown away while acting as human shields and hostages having their legs shot so they couldn’t run, survivors say.
Graphic new images include a photo of scores of dead lying in a tent at the rave, which turned into bloody mayhem after heavily armed Palestinian terrorists paraglided across the Gaza Strip border in Saturday’s early morning sneak attack on Israel.
Video showed the unsuspecting crowd earlier dancing to music as the terrorists could be seen coming down in the distance on motorized paragliders.
The disturbing photos posted online by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs also show people who were gunned down in the street while fleeing the Tribe of Nova music festival near Gaza, while one snapshot captures a bloodied hostage loaded in the back of a Hamas vehicle.
The bodies found at the site number at least 260, CNN reported, citing Israel’s rescue service Zaka.
“We debated whether or not to share these horrific images, but the world needs to know what we are up against,” the ministry said in a statement.
“These aren’t ‘freedom fighters.’ They are Hamas terrorists, but no different than ISIS terrorists,” the Israeli office said of the attackers. “Butchering families, kidnapping grandmothers. Desecrating bodies.”
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After the Palestinians paraglided into the area, “50 terrorists arrived at the rave site in vans, dressed in military uniforms,” a partygoer only identifed as Ortel told Israel’s Channel 12.
Raziel Tamir, who attended the music festival near Kibbutz Re’im, said he was awakened by gunshots, screams and explosions around 6 a.m. when the militant group began killing partygoers.
“When I went outside my tent, I saw a crazy number of bodies, and terrorists running and firing everywhere, throwing grenades and stun grenades at people,” Tamir told the public radio outlet, the Jerusalem Post reports.
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Tamir said he and 100 others were spared when Israeli soldiers used their bodies as human shields to protect those lying on the ground from incoming gunfire and explosions.
“The soldiers protected us with their bodies, and we saw them falling before our eyes,” he said.
Tamir likened the attack to a war zone, where the startled partygoer and his friends ran for cover behind trees and bushes as Hamas forces shot civilians and took hostages.
He noted that those who fled for the woods were spared an immediate ambush that Hamas had prepared for those who ran for the parking center.
“People tried to run to their cars, but the terrorists waited and slaughtered them as they tried to get into their cars and escape,” he explained.
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It wasn’t long until Hamas began firing into the bushes, where Tamir said he saw countless people die as he tried his best to dodge the gunfire before eventually covering himself in dirt and leaves to avoid detection.
As he hid, Tamir said, he recalled the screams of the wounded howling in pain, as well as those of two of his friends, whom he could hear being kidnapped and beaten.
He added that some of the kidnapped people had their legs shot so they could not resist or escape.
Tamir also claimed that Hamas terrorists were masquerading as IDF rescue forces during the bloodbath, tricking Israelis into thinking they were running toward their saviors only to be gunned down.
“I didn’t stop praying,” Tamir said of the horrific experience. “It is a miracle we got out of there without a scratch.”
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He said he is still in disbelief that he was the only one of his group of friends who managed to escape the ordeal.
“I don’t believe I’m alive; I don’t know if I’m alive, or if this is the way the dead feel,” he said of the feeling of emptiness.
Ortel said she survived by ducking into some bushes as bullets flew and people got shot and dropped.
“I put the phone on mute mode, and then I started crawling through an orange grove,” she said. “Live fire was whistling above me.”
Israel-Hamas war: How we got here
2005: Israel unilaterally withdraws from the Gaza Strip more than three decades after winning the territory from Egypt in the Six-Day War.
2006: Terrorist group Hamas wins a Palestinian legislative election.
2007: Hamas seizes control of Gaza in a civil war.
2008: Israel launches military offensive against Gaza after Palestinian terrorists fired rockets into the town of Sderot.
2023: Hamas launches the biggest attack on Israel in 50 years, in an early-morning ambush Oct. 7, firing thousands of rockets and sending dozens of militants into Israeli towns.
Terrorists killed more than 1,200 Israelis, wounded more than 4,200, and took at least 200 hostage.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to announce, “We are at war,” and vowed Hamas would pay “a price it has never known.”
The Gaza Health Ministry — which is controlled by Hamas — reported at least 3,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 12,500 injured since the war began.
The horror was nothing short of a ”massacre,” a medic at the scene told Israeli Public Radio.
“You don’t understand what it was. It was a massacre,” said the distraught emergency responder, identified only as Yaniv.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” he said. “It was a planned ambush.
“As people came out of the emergency exits, squads of terrorists were waiting for them there and just started picking them off. In the parking lots, people started running, murdering people inside the toilets. There were 3,000 people at the event, so [the Palestinians] probably knew it. They had intelligence information.”
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He said his entire medic team was wiped out.
“Each one in a different place and at a different time,” Yaniv said.“One decided that he was going out with his ambulance to provide first aid outside even though it was against the procedures — he was shot in the head. They killed the wounded we treated.”
More than 600 Israelis were killed and nearly 2,000 wounded as a result of the surprise attack from the Gaza Strip, the deadliest onslaught the nation has seen in more than 50 years.
Along with the shooting at the rave, Hamas terrorists invaded and fired thousands of rockets at Israeli towns.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to take “mighty vengeance” against Hamas. So far, about 370 people have been killed in retaliatory strikes on the other side of the Gaza Strip.
