Thousands of excited festivalgoers bought tickets to the Supernova event which coincided with the Jewish holiday Sukkot and was held in the Negev desert just five kilometres from the border with Gaza.
In the early hours of Saturday morning, revellers were still dancing when the sound of rockets filled the air.
Andrey Peairie attended the event with three friends and recounted the harrowing tale of their escape to Sky News Australia host Sharri Markson.
“And at around 6:30am the first rocket was shot and my first thought was, okay, a rocket was shot the Iron Dome will take care of that. Unfortunately, this is a common situation in Israel and we are kind of used to that,” he said.
“And then another one, and another one, and another one. And we are close, the party is a couple miles away.
“We gathered, we are four friends, we gathered together, we crouched on the floor. The music immediately stopped. The police and the organisers started evacuating everyone. And we were shocked.”
Peairie then revealed a key decision which may have saved the group’s life.
“We went to the tent, police evacuated us and we said, ‘none of us can drive, there is going to be a huge traffic jam and the Iron Dome is going to take care of it so let’s wait a bit,” he said.
“And I think that waiting saved our lives for the first time.”
The father of two paused to collect himself as he remembered a phone call one of the group members received from their partner.
“One of the guy’s wife called him and she said get out of there now, there is terrorists there,” he said.
Peairie said it had taken nearly 40 minutes for his group to understand the festival was under attack by terrorists. After the phone call, they quickly jumped in their car and navigated off-road to the festival’s exit.
“After about 50 metres we dropped the windows, we heard an explosion, we heard gunfire, people were running,” he said.
“We just ditched the car and…dropped to the creek. It’s in the desert so it’s a dry creek. And we hid there for about an hour. Only in my proximity there were about 30 people and I know throughout the creek there were more.”
The father-of-two described feeling helpless as he hid in the dry river bed for over an hour with gunfire all around.
“We were all panicked. The four of us stayed together, I think that is one of the things that saved our lives. We supported each other. We had a mantra ‘we are going home today’,” he said.
“And at one point, the bullets grazed the bush that we were hiding.”
Peairie then climbed out of the ditch to witness Hamas militants driving around the festival’s exit in pickup trucks.
“I looked at the junction and it’s a horror movie. Everything is on fire, pickups are driving there, those are the terrorists. I knew we can’t go to any settlement we need to run away from there,” he said.
“I said to everyone there I am going out of here, I don’t know where I am going but we are going away from here. If you want to join me, let’s go.”
His group eventually reached a road after four hours and was picked up by a police car which took them to a nearby town where they were able to catch buses back to their homes.
Peairie revealed his family had to run to the bomb shelter while he was trying to leave the festival and said he and his wife were trying to communicate via text throughout the ordeal.
“I’m telling her, ‘I know this is dangerous, I need to focus … I love you. And I need to focus on how to get us out of that situation,” he said.
Israeli emergency services later revealed 260 bodies had been found at the festival site and many others were taken captive by Hamas militants.
Videos posted to social media show revellers being gunned down while trying to escape the attack.
The incident is being describe as the worst civilian massacre in Israel’s history.
