At least 260 bodies have been recovered from the site of a music festival in Israel after an attack by Hamas, reported Israeli rescue service Zaka.
The shocking toll added the ultimate tragedy to the chilling accounts of suddenly encountering militants with machine guns determined to kill in the middle of a crowd of young people dancing and laughing, which turned to screams.
Hamas fired rockets and then gunmen shot at those fleeing the Supernova Festival on Saturday as part of its surprise attack on the Gaza Strip. The festival was an all-night rave held at Kibbutz Re’im, close to Gaza.
An emergency worker, who was only identified as Yaniv by Kan News, told the Daily Mail that it was a “massacre.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” Yaniv 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.”
Video obtained by the Mail shows festival goers running for their lives as shots are fired.
More stories continued to emerge from the gruesome ordeal.
One Israeli father, 51-year-old Mark Peretz, raced to the scene in his car as soon as he heard what was happening, in hopes of rescuing his 20-year-old daughter, Maya.
She had initially managed to escape the festival by car, but she and her group of friends were later forced to abandon the vehicle.
Mark Peretz was on the phone with his family as he searched for Maya when shots rang out and the phone cut out. No one has heard from Mark — or Maya — since, the New York Post reported.
He dropped everything to save her, “even … given the fact that there were rockets being thrown over our heads, given the fact that he saw Hamas terrorists riding into Israel, taking parachutes into Israel … he went to go rescue Maya,” Peretz’s daughter-in-law, Jessica Cohen, 24, told the Post.
Many at the festival are still missing. Some are believed to be hostages, BBC reported.
Amit Parpara told the outlet that his friend went missing, and he later saw a video of her being taken by soldiers.
It showed her “on a motorcycle, being taken away from her boyfriend,” he said. “You can see clearly her terror going into the Gaza Strip.”
Michael Atias, who was at the festival, said gunmen were systematically attacking festival-goers as they desperately fled the area.
He told the Times of London: “It started off as a beautiful party, with great vibes and energy. But at around 6:30 am, the rocket fire started. Many people panicked and started running to their cars.”
As people ran ahead, “we heard gunshots, and later realized that the gunmen were targeting those who were trying to flee the party — they were waiting for them,” he said
The Hamas attack was met with retaliatory strikes from Israel, which formally declared war on the group Sunday.
The death toll on the region is now over 1,100,. At least four of those deaths were American citizens.
