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Israeli rescue workers say more than 200 people were killed and an unspecified number were abducted when Hamas fighters stormed a music festival close to the Gaza Strip, which was in full swing in the early hours of Saturday when the Palestinian militant group launched its biggest attack on Israel in decades.
Thousands of revellers had gathered at the outdoor Tribe of Nova music festival in the Negev desert, a few kilometres from Israel’s militarised border with Gaza, for what was meant to be an all-night dance party coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
Instead, the rave party became a site of deadly chaos when militants from the Gaza Strip suddenly swept the area, gunning down hundreds of people and snatching several more as terrified revellers raced for cover.
The Israeli rescue service Zaka said paramedics had removed “between 200 and 250 people”, or bodies, from the music festival, with the figure expected to rise as teams continued working to clear the area.
“They butchered people in cold blood in an inconceivable way,” Moti Bukjin, a spokesman for Zaka, told AFP. Festival organisers said in a statement on social media they were assisting security forces to help locate missing people who attended the event.
Read moreFollow our live coverage of the fighting in Israel and the Gaza Strip
Video posted to social media showed a young woman being abducted by men on a motorbike as she cried for help. Another man nearby was led away with his hands behind his back. A separate video showed dozens of panicked festivalgoers running through a field, trying to get into their cars, as gunshots rang out.
“They (Hamas militants) started shooting at us at point blank,” said Ester Borochov, 19, who managed to flee in her car before it was hit by bullets and broke down.
“A young man took us in his Jeep. They shot him, he lost consciousness and his car overturned,” Borochov told Israel’s Channel…
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