The bodies of more than 250 people were found and pulled out in the Israeli countryside, not far from the demarcation fence with the Gaza Strip, where a music festival was held, where Hamas militants drove up from their vehicles armed and opened fire indiscriminately on people, the BBC writes.

The war in Israel after the terrorist attacks by HamasPhoto: Llya Yefimovych / DPA / Profimedia

The Zaka search and rescue organization reported the casualties on Sunday evening, citing Israeli media, the BBC reports.

However, the balance is expected to increase.

The Nova music festival – with three stages, a camping area and a bar and restaurant area – took place in the Negev desert, near Kibbutz Reim. It is a site not far from the Gaza Strip where Hamas fighters crossed at dawn on Saturday to launch their attack.

According to the organizers, about 3 thousand people took part in the festival.

Many were killed by Hamas militants, some were kidnapped, and nothing is known about others.

Horrifying footage of the gruesome scenes that took place there have been circulating on social media since Saturday.

But Yaniv, an emergency doctor who was called to the festival, told public broadcaster Kan News:

  • “It was a massacre. I have never seen anything like it in my life. It was a planned ambush. While people came out of the emergency exits, there were groups of terrorists waiting for them, who simply started to destroy them.
  • There were 3,000 people at the event, so they must have known. They had information from the special services.”

Details about the hostages in the attack are beginning to emerge as family members recognize them in videos circulating online. A video that has gone viral shows the abduction of an Israeli woman and her boyfriend, identified as Noa Arghamani and Avinatan Or, who attended the festival.

It will be recalled that the surprise attack by Hamas on Israel, which involved armed men who penetrated security barriers and an avalanche of rockets fired from Gaza, occurred on Saturday, at dawn, during the great Jewish holiday of Simhat Torah. The attack comes 50 years and a day after Egyptian and Syrian forces launched an offensive during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur in an attempt to retake territory captured by Israel during a brief conflict in 1967.

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