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The sun had just risen over Israel’s Negev desert, and at the all-night outdoor rave at Kibbutz Re’im, the party was still going. Thumping trance music was playing full volume, and under brightly-coloured canopies, hundreds of revellers were dancing themselves into exhaustion.
Then, just as chill-out time began to beckon, uninvited guests arrived. On footage captured by a partygoer’s mobile phone, several small black dots can be seen approaching in the dawn sky from the direction of Gaza. As the cameraman shouts what appears to be a warning, fellow revellers ignore him, unable to hear because of the music.
Moments later, the dancing stops as the airborne arrivals are revealed as motorised paragliders carrying armed Hamas militants. As rocket fire also begins, the dancers flee for their lives – chased by gunmen bent on shooting or kidnapping anyone in their path.
Following the rampage, which began at around 7am on Saturday, dozens of partygoers were reported to have been killed or kidnapped, with many more still missing. The unconscious body of a dreadlocked female attendee was later paraded through Gaza in a truck, as passers-by spat on her. Among those reported to have been captured was a 26-year-old British citizen, Jake Marlowe, who was helping with security at the rave.
On Sunday, survivors told how they had fled in cars and on foot across the desert, dodging machine gun fire, artillery and rocket-propelled grenades.
Partygoer Chen Mizrachi, a resident of Tel Aviv, told Israel’s Ynet news website: “It started at seven in the morning. When the rocket fire from the sky began, we started shouting ‘Code Red’ to everyone (a warning used by Israelis for incoming rocket attacks from Gaza). There were several firing points; we ran from one direction to another.
“Many fell and were injured from terrorist fire … Somehow, we managed to escape the line of fire. They shot at us three times during the escape.”
He and his friends eventually escaped, despite a rocket-propelled grenade hitting their car. “Gradually, I see friends I know arriving at the hospital. These are very, very difficult sights,” he added.
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Gunmen stalked the festival site executing revellers, other witnesses said.
Gili Yoskovich told the BBC that she hid under a fruit tree, playing dead for three hours to dodge the gunfire and killings.
“I saw people were dying all around. I was very quiet. I didn’t cry, I didn’t do anything,’ she said.
“I was … breathing, saying: “OK, I’m going to die. It’s OK, just breathe, just close your eyes”.”
She added: “They were going tree by tree and shooting. Everywhere. From two sides. I saw people were dying all around.”
Another partygoer Esther Borochov survived by playing dead in a car after the driver trying to help her escape was shot point blank.
“I couldn’t move my legs,” she told Reuters while being treated in hospital. “Soldiers came and took us away to the bushes.”
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Noya Reuven, 20, told The Times of Israel how hundreds of partygoers ran to their vehicles as rockets were fired overhead. While pulling away in a vehicle, she heard shots fired into the crowd.
The rave was being put on to mark the end of Israel’s week-long Sukkot religious festival, and had begun at around 11pm on Friday. The kibbutz where it was being held lies roughly two miles from the heavily-guarded border with the Gaza Strip, which Hamas militants breached with bulldozers on Saturday.
Another partygoer told Israel’s Channel 12 TV that at first the rocket noise “sounded like it was part of the music”. He said he and his friends “felt the bullets flying around us” as they attempted to reach their cars. When the melee of fleeing vehicles then got stuck at a bottleneck, passengers fled on foot across the desert.
Tal Gibly, another party attendee, said she abandoned her own vehicle and ran for cover in nearby woodlands, passing dead and injured people lying on the roadside. She shared a video with CNN that showing one rave-goer shot dead outside a van and another dead in the vehicle’s passenger seat.
“It was so terrifying and we didn’t know where to drive to not meet those evil … people,” she told the channel. “I have a lot of friends that got lost in the forest for a lot of hours and got shot like it was a range.”
As survivors made their way to nearby hospitals, volunteers with Israel’s Home Front Command drafted lists of those feared dead or missing. One group of around 30 revellers reportedly reappeared safe on Sunday morning after nearly 24 hours in hiding.
By Sunday, reports were also emerging of partygoers being held in Gaza. Among those feared to be there was the British citizen Mr Marlowe. According to Jewish News, a UK weekly newspaper, He had called his mother to say that the rave was under rocket attack and then texted her an hour later to say he loved her.
Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, told Sky News that she knew of “one British citizen who is in Gaza at the moment,” but did not say who it was.
The dreadlocked partygoer paraded through the streets of Gaza was reported to be Shani Louk, a German-Israeli dual national. CNN said it had verified a video showing her being driven in a truck guarded by a militant carrying a rocket-propelled grenade, while one of his comrades held her by the hair. Onlookers joined in with cheers of “Allahu Akbar” – Arabic for “God is great.”
Shani Louk is believed to have been taken prisoner by Hamas
In a video obtained by the German news outlet Bild, Louk’s mother Ricarda said: “This morning, my daughter, Shani Nicole Louk, a German citizen, was kidnapped with a group of tourists in southern Israel by Palestinian Hamas.”
“We were sent a video in which I could clearly see our daughter unconscious in the car with the Palestinians and them driving around the Gaza Strip. I ask you to send us any help or any news.”
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