A father told his daughter to pretend to be dead when members of the militant group Hamas descended on the Tribe of Nova music festival, resulting in what is believed to be the largest-ever killing of Israeli civilians.
The young Israeli woman, named Yuval, can be heard frantically telling her father to contact the police in an audio clip that she later shared with the Israeli television network Keshet 12.
“Take a deep breath. Hide. Act dead,” her father told her.
When Yuval told her father that she was being crushed and that there were dead bodies over her, he begged her to “stay crushed.”
“It was impossible to breathe. I made sure to tell everyone to play dead: ‘We are dead now. We are not alive,’” Yuval told Keshet 12.
Images from the attack at the Tribe of Nova music festival have flooded social media – including footage of some attendees, like Noa Argamani, being taken hostage by members of Hamas.
Those who escaped the event, without being killed or kidnapped, said that they waited for hours before anyone came to their aid.
“The most crazy thing is how come we were there for such a long time and no one was there,” Gili Yoskovich told the BBC. “No army, no police. Nothing.”
Yuval and two other women, Bar and Adar, told reporters that they hid in silence for seven hours before being rescued. The waiting period was “an eternity” the women told Keshet 12.
In less than a week, thousands of people across Israel and Gaza have been injured or displaced by the war. At least 1,200 Israelis and more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, while an estimated 150 people are being held hostage by Hamas.
