Terror followed happiness. Very early Saturday morning, a rave party in the Israeli desert ended with a Hamas attack. Dozens of young revelers, participating in the Nova Festival, were killed or kidnapped, in parallel with the “Al-Aqsa flood” launched by the Palestinian Islamist movement against Israel. Many families are still without news of their loved ones, but the first victims are beginning to be identified. 20 minutes takes stock for you.
What is the Nova Festival?
Organized by the company NOVA Productions, the trance music festival brought together several thousand young people on Friday, on the occasion of Sukkot, the Jewish harvest festival. This open-air festival took place in the Negev desert, near the Israeli kibbutz Re’im, located approximately 4 kilometers from the border with the Gaza Strip. The party started around 11 p.m. Friday, but hundreds of participants were still dancing at dawn, when Hamas launched its offensive, as these pictures show.
Later in the day, the Instagram account of the Nova Festival soberly displayed a message in story: “A major disaster has hit our country, we are on the ground with help and doing our best to help everyone. We are with you in pain. »
What happened at the end of the rave party?
The circumstances of the attack which occurred around 6:30 a.m., according to CNN, are still unclear, despite the first testimonies from survivors. According to the daily Haaretz, “terrorists on motorcycles” appeared and fired on the crowd. Other witnesses speak of fighters arriving in microlights. Others still fired rockets or gunshots.
In the crowd movement, dozens of young people managed to reach their vehicles and escape. But not everyone is so lucky. “We escaped and managed to take refuge under a tank. The terrorists then targeted us with a rocket launcher,” said Chen to I24News channel. Gili Yoskovich, who says she stayed there for several hours, spoke to the BBC. “The terrorists came from four or five places… […] Some people were shooting at me. I got out of the car and started running. » The young woman also explained that she hid, lying behind a tree “for three hours” before the arrival of the Israeli army. “I saw people dying all around,” she said, before wondering why “no one was there” to save her earlier.
What do we know about missing people?
According to Israeli channel Channel 12, dozens of bodies were found at the rave party site. But videos and messages also indicate that many people are missing or even kidnapped. A video shows a young woman, wearing tattoos and dreadlocks, unconscious in the back of a pick-up in the Gaza Strip. Elements which allowed his mother and his cousin, found by the daily newspaper Bild and the Washington Postto identify Shani Louk, a German citizen.
A couple was also identified: Moshe Or and Noa Argamani. In a video, the latter, sitting on the back of a motorcycle, screams as she is taken away, while her companion, with his hands tied behind his back, is kept there by those who took him prisoner . Moshe Or’s brother confirmed their identities to Channel 12. Other unauthenticated images reportedly show Noa Argamani detained in Gaza, according to the BBC.
A 26-year-old Franco-Israeli, “Avidan T., originally from Bordeaux”, was also kidnapped, according to French Abroad MP Meyer Habib. “He was one of the organizers of the rave party,” he explains, and “sent a message around 9 a.m. (…) of love, but in which we felt a lot of distress.” The young man has since been nowhere to be found, but it is “too early” to confirm that he was kidnapped, according to Elisabeth Borne.
The Israeli embassy in the United Kingdom also confirmed the disappearance, but not the taking hostage, of a 26-year-old British citizen, Jake Marlowe. Living in Israel for two years, the latter provided security for the Nova Festival. “He is missing, we do not know for sure if he was taken hostage, or if he is dead or in hospital,” an embassy spokesperson told the British agency. PA. His mother, Lisa, told the newspaper Jewish News that he called her Saturday morning “at 4:30” and described the rocket attacks. “Then at about 5:30 a.m. he texted me to say ‘bad connection, everything is fine, I’ll keep you posted, I promise’ and that he loved me.” But she hasn’t heard anything since.
In total, “more than 100 prisoners” are in the hands of Hamas, according to the Israeli government. No official report of the attack on the rave party has yet been communicated by the authorities.