Israel-Hamas conflict: how the massacre at the “Brazilian rave” unfolded according to videos and posts verified by the BBC

Israel-Hamas conflict: how the massacre at the “Brazilian rave” unfolded according to videos and posts verified by the BBC


The BBC has viewed videos and images that reconstruct the massacre at the music festival where 260 people were killed by members of the Islamic group Hamas in Israel last Saturday.




Warning: This article contains details of violence that some may find distressing.

The last videos shot before the start of the terror show that it was a party like many others: young people danced at dawn. But the event turned into the most violent episode of the attacks by the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas against Israel on Saturday (10/07).

According to some reports, there were around 4,000 people on site; according to Israeli authorities, around 260 were killed. From the footage it appears that most of them are under 30 years old.

They gathered in a remote area of ​​southern Israel for the Supernova festival, an event that promised dancing, music, art and drinks in a secret location.

The electronic music festival was created by Brazilian DJ Alok’s father, Juarez Petrillo, known as DJ Swarup. The Israeli version was promoted and organized by a local producer.

The public was told shortly before the event to head to a point north of Kibbutz Re’im, about 6 kilometers east of Gaza. Party organizers promised a “journey of unity and love”.



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And indeed, there are plenty of happy faces to be seen in a video uploaded at 7.22am local time showing the audience laughing and dancing in the dim morning light.

But above their heads small black clouds of smoke signal the beginning of the imminent terror.

They appear to be some remnants left by defensive missiles used by the Israeli army to intercept rockets launched from Gaza.

In the following hours, Hamas launched thousands of rockets against Israel.

BBC Verify collected recordings of the weekend’s festival massacre using videos and social media posts and facial recognition technology.

Some of the festival goers can be seen in the footage looking at the dark smoke above their heads. Others remain oblivious and continue dancing.



A video on the website shows festival-goers dancing as some begin to notice signs of what appears to be a rocket launch overhead.

In another video posted shortly after, the music stopped.

People have started to evacuate the festival site: some seem panicked, others are hiding or heading towards the exit appearing indifferent.

The next phase of the attack was already underway a short distance from the Gaza barrier.

“They were everywhere”

It’s unclear how many minutes passed between the rockets’ launch and the gunmen’s arrival, but testimony suggests it happened quickly.

“There were rockets, then they started shooting. They were coming from different directions and getting louder and louder,” said Gilad Karplus, 31, who worked as a masseur at the festival.

“I saw people falling. When we saw it, we jumped in the jeep and went to the camp.”

An Instagram post, posted by an attendee, showed rockets in the sky and people leaving the scene.

“We passed along a main road, but after a minute someone started shouting that terrorists were shooting,” he wrote to his followers.

“But after two minutes, in the opposite direction, we realized that there were other terrorists there too.”

It’s impossible to know whether the activists knew the festival was taking place there, but they certainly would have heard the music echoing in the silence of the countryside.

We also know that whether they found the location by chance or not, they were ready to kill.

Gili Yoskovich told BBC News at the weekend how fighters “were everywhere with automatic weapons” and how he heard more weapons being unloaded from a van.

All reports suggest that the camp was indeed surrounded and roads in and out of the site were blocked.

Participants were running in all directions, but some were still within range of the gunmen.



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Gilad, who served in the Israeli army, said:

“We knew they probably blocked the road. I’m pretty sure a lot of people died on those roads. We went into the fields and tried to hide from them… Then we went a little deeper into the fields and then they started shooting at us with rifles, sniper weapons from different places and also with heavy artillery.”

While walking towards what he hoped was a safe place, Gilad saw an Israeli military vehicle, he says.

“We drove very slowly and when we got there we saw that it had been hit by an anti-tank missile or something.”

According to him there was no trace of the soldiers who were there.

Death on film

As some fled into the fields and desert, militants swarmed the festival, killing anyone who appeared.

Dashcam footage recorded at 9.23am, taken from a parked car, shows three of the gunmen who took part in the massacre.

In the opening frame of the recording we see a motionless body next to a car.

A fighter with an automatic weapon is then seen ordering a bloodied man out of range to lie on the ground, before grabbing him from behind and carrying him away from the camera’s field of view. It is not known whether he survived.



man captured

And then the body of the car moves. The man, who appears to be pretending to be dead, moves. He looks up to see if he was alone.

It was a fatal mistake.

Seconds later, another man enters the frame and shoots him in the head at point blank range and walks away.



man under the car, running

At a later point in the same footage, a group of men appear, apparently to loot. Only one is armed.

They are seen searching the pockets of the body next to the car and rummaging through a suitcase in another parked vehicle.

Then they find more than luggage. Two people, a man and a woman, who were hiding in a car are discovered and taken away.

The woman suddenly reappears two minutes later. She jumps and waves her arms in the air. She must think that help was at hand: by this point the Israel Defense Forces had already begun their efforts to repel the incursion. But seconds later she falls to the ground as bullets ricochet around her. It is not known whether she survived.

The BBC analyzed and published still images of the gunmen visible through a facial recognition tool.

He combined one of the faces with images of a man in a police uniform, available on the website of the municipality of Nuseirat, Gaza.

We compared them using Amazon Rekognition software and got a similarity score of between 94 and 97 percent (some activists, however, have raised concerns that non-white faces could be misidentified in facial recognition tools).



The faces of the three men who took part in the attack: facial recognition tools matched the shooter in the center with images of a man in a police uniform in Gaza

260 dead

Throughout the festival site, these violent scenes were repeated over and over again.

According to the Zaka rescue agency, at least 260 bodies were found at the site.

Cellphone and drone footage reveals the scale of the Hamas attack, with the streets leading to the sites packed with cars packed with people who failed to survive the shooting.

The festival has become a war zone and for some the nightmare continues.

Hamas says it has taken several hostages there and the Israelis say around 100 people from across the country are being held inside Gaza.

One of the most heartbreaking videos to emerge from the festival is that of a woman named Noa Argamani on social media.

In images published by Hamas, she is seen placed on the back of a motorcycle by fighters, crying and screaming as she reaches out for a man who is being held down. He watches her as she is taken away.

In Gaza, images showing the woman alive circulated on social media, but it is unclear whether they are authentic.

Their families and those of others abducted at the festival are awaiting news of their relatives and it is unclear how the Israeli government intends to get them back.

Additional reporting by Shayan Sardarizadeh, Alex Murray, Jemimah Herd and Alice Cuddy.

Source: Terra

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