At least 260 people have been confirmed dead at a music festival in Israel following the attack by Hamas over the weekend.
The Tribe of Nova music festival, an all-night rave with electronic music, was being held in a field near the Gaza-Israel border on Friday to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. But sounds of rockets and sirens signaled an attack by Hamas early on Saturday morning.
Tal Gibly was in attendance and said panic ensued once explosions and gunshots could be heard throughout the campgrounds.
“Everyone got so panicked and started to take their stuff,” she told CNN.Â
Many festivalgoers were under the influence of drugs or alcohol, the Associated Press reported, which only added to their fear and confusion amid the chaos.
Gibly said everyone was scrambling to find a way out of the area, but no one knew where it would be safe.
“We didn’t even have any place to hide because we were at [an] open space,” she said, as reported by CNN. “I have a lot of friends that got lost at the forest for a lot of hours and got shot like it was a range.”
“It was so terrifying, and we didn’t know where to drive to not meet those evil … people,” she recounted.
Zohar Maariv reiterated these statements, saying that concertgoers were doing anything possible to escape the campgrounds safely.
“At one stage, me and a friend got into a car with people we didn’t know, and we just jumped into a car with lots of people and started to drive,” said Maariv, per NDTV.
Others, such as Maya Alper, were unable to escape the campgrounds and instead chose to hide for hours until they were safely rescued.
Alper said she hid inside a bush for hours without moving to avoid detection, doing nothing but “breathing and praying in every way I knew possible.”
“Every time I thought of anger, or fear or revenge, I breathed it out,” she said, per the AP.Â
“I tried to think of what I was grateful for — the bush that hid me so well that even birds landed on it, the birds that were still singing, the sky that was so blue.”
Lee Sasi told Israel’s i24News that she entered a bomb shelter to hide with roughly 30 to 35 other people, but only 10 managed to escape following Hamas militants firing bullets at the group.
“Yes after 7 hours being in hiding under dead bodies in the bomb shelter,” wrote Sasi in a text message to Gutman. “I’m not joking.”
While some were able to hide and escape the Hamas attackers, other concertgoers, such as 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin, have been missing since the attack.
His father, Jonathan Polin, said his son texted him during the attack to say “I love you” and “I’m sorry,” per NBC News.
He has since filed a police report and submitted multiple DNA samples in hopes of finding his son.
“The terrible irony in his case, and in the case of many of the others who were there, was they made it through their mandatory military service,” said Polin, per NBC.Â
“They served their country. They did what they were asked to do for the country, and they were simply enjoying a holiday in nature, listening to music, and terror ensued.”
The attack is thought to be the worst civilian massacre in Israel’s history, according to the AP.
