Day: November 23, 2023

JERUSALEM (AP) — The night was a getaway. Thousands of young men and women gathered at a vast field in southern Israel near the Gaza border to dance without a care. Old and new friends jumped up and down, reveling in the swirl of the bass-heavy beats.

Maya Alper was standing toward the back of the bar with teams of environmentally conscious volunteers, picking up trash and passing out free vodka shots to party-goers who reused their cups. Just after 6.a.m., as a light-blue dawn broke and the headliner D.J. took the stage, air raid sirens cut through the ethereal trap music. Rockets streaked overhead.

Alper, 25, jumped into her car and raced to the main road. But at the intersection she encountered crowds of stricken festival attendees, shouting at drivers to turn around. Then, a noise. Firecrackers? Panicked men and women staggering down the road just in front of her fell to the ground in pools of blood. Gunshots.

Saturday’s attack on the open-air Tribe of Nova music festival is believed to be the worst civilian massacre in Israeli history, with at least 260 dead and a still undetermined number taken hostage. Dozens of Hamas militants who had blown through Israel’s heavily fortified separation fence and crossed into the country from Gaza opened fire on about 3,500 young Israelis who had come together for a joyous night of electronic music to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Some attendees were drunk or high on drugs, magnifying their confusion and terror.

The Associated Press reviewed more than dozen videos taken during the massacre and interviewed survivors to reconstruct how the deadly attack unfolded. The party was held in a dusty field outside of Kibbutz Re’im, about 3.3 miles (5.3 kilometers) from the wall that separates Gaza from southern Israel.

“We were hiding and running, hiding and running, in an open field — the worst place you could possibly be in that situation,” said Arik Nani from Tel Aviv, who had gone to the party to celebrate his 26th birthday. “For a country where everyone in these circles knows everyone, this is a trauma like I could never imagine.”

While rockets rained down, revelers said, militants converged on the festival site while others waited near bomb shelters, gunning down people who were seeking refuge. Many of the militants, who arrived in trucks and on motorcycles, were wearing body armor and brandishing AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

Videos compiled by Israeli first responders and posted to the social media site Telegram show armed men plunging into the panicked crowd, mowing down fleeing revelers with bursts of automatic fire. Many victims were shot in the back as they ran.

Israeli communities on either side of the festival grounds also came under attack, with Hamas gunmen abducting dozens of men, women and children — including elderly and disabled people — and killing scores of others in Saturday’s unprecedented surprise attack.

The staggering toll from the festival was becoming clear Monday, as Israel’s rescue service Zaka said paramedics had recovered at least 260 bodies. Festival organizers said they were helping Israeli security forces locate attendees who were still missing. The death toll could rise as teams continue to clear the area.

As the carnage unfolded before her, Alper pulled a few disoriented-looking revelers into her car from the street and accelerated in the opposite direction. One of them said he had lost his wife in the chaos and Alper had to stop him from breaking out of the car to find her. Another said she had just seen Hamas gunmen shoot and kill her best friend. Another rocked in his seat, murmuring over and over, “We are going to die.” In the rear-view mirror, Alper watched the dance floor where she had spent the past ecstatic hours transform into a giant cloud of black smoke.

Festival-goers who managed to make it to the road and parking lot where their vehicles were parked found themselves trapped in a traffic jam, with militants stalking the cars and spraying those inside with gunfire. Drone footage of the scene taken after the attack and reviewed by the AP show chaotic lines of cars where drivers had attempted to flee. Some burned-out vehicles were flipped onto their sides, while others had bullet holes visible in shattered windows.

Nowhere was safe, Alper said. The roar of explosions, hysterical screams and automatic gunfire felt closer the further she drove. When a man just meters away shouted “God is great!”, Alper and her new companions sprung out of the car and sprinted through open fields toward a mass of bushes.

Alper felt a bullet whiz past her left ear. Aware the gunmen would outrun her, she plunged into a tangle of shrubs. Peering through thorns, she said she saw one of her passengers, the girl who had lost her friend, shriek and collapse as a gunman stood over her limp body, grinning.

“I can’t even explain the energy they (the militants) had. It was so clear they didn’t see us as human beings,” she said. “They looked at us with pure, pure hate.”

Videos show the gunmen executed some of the wounded at point-blank range as they crouched on the ground. Some of the militants even rifled through the vehicles of their victims, grabbing purses and backpacks.

An unknown number of people from the festival were taken hostage. A video posted to social media by militants and verified by the AP shows an Israeli couple, Noa Argamani and her partner Avinatan Or, being dragged away by their captors.

Argamani, her face contorted in panic, shouts “No, no!” in Hebrew while being forced onto a motorbike, sandwiched between two gunmen. She reaches out for Or, whose hands are bound behind his back as a group of militants march him forward.

Their whereabouts are now unknown. But Hamas claims it is now holding more than 100 Israelis as hostages. On Monday, the group threatened to begin systematically killing captives if the Israeli military bombs Palestinian areas without warning.

For over six hours, Alper and thousands of other concert attendees hid without help from the Israeli army as Hamas militants sprayed automatic gunfire and threw grenades.

Her limbs were so contorted into a tangled mess in the bush that she couldn’t wiggle her toes. At different points, she heard militants speak in Arabic just beside her. A yoga devotee who practices meditation, Alper said she focused on her breath — “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. “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.”

A tank instructor in the Israeli army, Alper knew she was safe when she heard a different kind of explosion — the sound of an Israeli army tank round. She shouted for help and soon soldiers were lifting her out of the bush. Around her lay the lifeless body of one of her friends. The girl from her car she had seen collapse was nowhere to be found; she believes that Hamas militants took her into Gaza.

Alper said the Israeli army, on its way to fight Hamas militants in the hard-hit kibbutz of Be’eri near the Gaza border, was at a loss as to know what to do with her.

At that moment, a pick-up truck full of Palestinian citizens of Israel pulled up. The men from the Bedouin city of Rahat were scouring the area to help rescue Israeli survivors. Helping Alper into their car, they drove her to the police station, where she collapsed, crying, into her father’s arms.

“This is not just war. This is hell,” Alper said. “But in that hell I still feel that somehow, we can choose to act out of love, and not just fear.”

___

Biesecker reported from Washington.

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LONDON — Hamas militants broke through Israel’s complex border security systems with the morning of Oct. 7, attacking the neighboring towns, killing hundreds of people and taking at least 150 hostages.

ABC News’ Visual Verification team has analyzed dozens of videos posted to social media by Hamas militants and found they form a picture of exactly where — and how — militants were able to breach the border fence and penetrate into surrounding towns.

Map of 6 verified points where fence between Gaza and Israel was breached

This map identifies six points on the Israel-Gaza border fence where video evidence confirms Hamas militants crossed over to Israel.

While the Israel Defense Forces have said there were between 20 and 30 entry points, these are the only ones that ABC News can confirm with video so far.

In the videos detailed below, they are on foot and on motorcycles, in white pickup trucks and on paragliders.

The towns named on the map are some of the nearest inhabited areas to these crossings and places where civilians and soldiers are confirmed to have been killed or taken hostage.

The coordinated attacks are nearly all filmed with the sun rising in the distance, indicating they were filmed around 6:40 a.m. when the sun rose on Saturday.

The videos that identify the six above locations paint a picture of the movements of Hamas militants on that morning.

Map of verified attacks on weapons bearing towers on Israel Gaza border

Google Earth / Hamas Military Media Handout / Canva

Before moving across the border, drone videos show attacks on towers along the border that were armed with weapons.

Three verifiable locations are shown on the map above. Additional video also shows attacks on observation and satellite towers along the border.

Map of Kerem Shalom border checkpoint and screengrabs of Hamas video of crossing at this location.

Google Earth / Hamas Military Media Handout / Canva

At the Kerem Shalom border checkpoint, in the far south of Gaza near the border with Egypt, militants can be seen on video crossing a hole in the fence both on foot and on motorcycles.

Small military outpost near Kerem Shalom

Hamas Military Media Handout

Videos then show them raiding a nearby military camp outside the kibbutz of Kerem Shalom where several bodies can be seen on the floor and inside rooms.

Images of Hamas militants crossing the Israel Gaza border at Erez Checkpoint.

Google Earth / Hamas Military Media Handout / Canva

At the other end of the border, at the very north of Gaza, militants stormed the Erez border checkpoint where dramatic video shows an explosion at the border wall before following armed Hamas militants as they enter the border facility and kill some of the soldiers there.

Another video from the Erez checkpoint shows the militants take hostages and lead them back through the wall and into Gaza.

Planet Labs PBC satellite imagery shows a before and after view of the border wall at the Erez Checkpoint

Satellite images from Planet Labs also show the before-and-after view where the wall was blown up to get across at the checkpoint.

People break through the Gaza Israel border fence near Nir Oz.

Google Earth / Hamas Military Media Handout

The breach of this fence was widely circulated on social media in the immediate aftermath of the incursion because of the capture of a tank near the hole in the fence and videos show the tank burning as Hamas militants pull a dazed soldier out of it.

Later on, a bulldozer arrived and created an even bigger hole in the fence as dozens of people can be seen going in and out at will.

Hamas militants gather at an open fence on the Israel Gaza border near the town of Kisufim.

Google Earth / Hamas Military Media / Handout

Here, as the sun rises on the horizon, images show militants approach a wide open fence near the kibbutz of Kisufim. This is also the nearest verified crossing point to Re’im, another town which suffered attacks.

Hamas militants gather at Israel Gaza border fence as the sun rises, Saturday October 7th.

Hamas Military Media Handout

Militants here are gathered in groups on the back of pickup trucks where one of the men can be seen running through the fence on foot before launching a missile from a handheld device.

Images from Hamas military videos show militants breaking through the Israel Gaza border fence near Be’eri

Hamas Military Media Handout

Just as the light begins to change, trucks can be seen inching toward holes in a second smaller fence in Gaza behind the main border fence near the kibbutz of Be’eri, where dozens of bodies were found.

Additionally, explosions at the fence show holes being made for easier passage and drone footage shows rockets being launched nearby as trucks then speed across fields on the Israeli side of the fence.

Militants break through the Israel Gaza border fence near Nahal Oz and Kfar Aza

Hamas Military Media Handout

Meanwhile, between Nahal Oz and Kfar Aza — two towns devastated by the attack — video shows the fence being broken open and dozens of men running across open fields as well as images of explosions at key towers and fence posts nearby that captures footage of a paraglider heading toward Israel.

This is the picture of only six of the different crossings made by Hamas militants on the morning of Oct. 7. However, up and down the Gaza border, evidence shows Hamas militants moving in a coordinated manner at sunrise to make it across Israel’s defenses.