Steve Markachenko, a 25-year-old from Carmel, in northern Israel, had been looking forward to attending the Nova music festival on a desert kibbutz this weekend. He and his girlfriend, Elisa Levin, 34, drove four hours south on Friday night for the event celebrating the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.
But at 6.30am on Saturday, they were among thousands of young partygoers enjoying the sunrise, unaware that their lives were about to change forever. At first, the air raid sirens seemed like they were part of the trance music, survivors said. Then rocket vapour trails began appearing in the sky above: people began panicking about being caught in the open, rushing to their cars. And then the gunfire began.
Around 200 people are believed to have been killed at the all-night festival, and dozens more are still missing, believed to have been taken to the Gaza Strip as hostages. The attack was one of the worst single incidents during the Palestinian militant group Hamas’ surprise offensive Operation al-Aqsa Flood - a day that will go down in history as Israel’s 9/11.
Some attendees watched their friends die in front of them; others played dead for hours until they heard voices speaking in Hebrew and knew help had arrived. Videos from the scene showed lifeless bodies on the ground, a shot-up van, and men and women being dragged away by armed militants. Screams fill the air.
One harrowing clip showed an Israeli woman identified as Noa Argamani pleading for her life as she was separated from her partner and driven away on a motorbike by two Hamas fighters.
Markachenko and Levin managed to escape the initial chaos, his brother Dima said. Their car’s GPS system shows the vehicle still located about 5km (3 miles) away from the party site. But no one has heard from the couple since around 6.15am, when Levin called her brother.
“We don’t know anything. The Home Front, the police, the army, no one has any information to give us. We’ve been to every hospital in the country, nothing. And the road is blocked, so we can’t go to their car,” the 32-year-old said.
“All this technology, all this stuff we have done to keep ourselves safe, the army, it meant nothing. This country is a joke.”
Israeli soldiers take position on the main road near the border with Gaza. Photograph: Atef Safadi/EPA
Markachenko was at a missing persons centre set up at a police station near Tel Aviv’s airport on Sunday to register his brother’s name and submit DNA samples. He was one of hundreds of quiet, subdued people who went in and out of the centre over the course of the morning. In what is usually a deeply divided society, Israelis of all backgrounds – secular, ultra-Orthodox, nationalist-religious types, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, and Palestinian citizens of Israel – milled around the building, united in worry and grief.
Some people were sure of their loved ones’ whereabouts after seeing their terrified faces in Hamas videos that appear to have been filmed inside Gaza….
2023-10-08 12:44:04
Article from www.theguardian.com
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