Wild footage shows the moment Hamas militants paraglide into Israeli dance festival
Stewart Perrie
Featured Image Credit: TikTok/yuuuot3. CNN
Incredible footage shows the moment Hamas militants paraglided into Israel and landed near a music festival.
The Nova Music Festival is an all-day, all-night festival held in rural southern Israel.
The BBC says the event coincides with the Jewish festival of Sukkot.
Before Nova kicked off, organizers wrote: "The time has come when the whole family is about to get together again. And what fun it is going to be!"
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Hundreds of people had gathered in the desert rave location to forget their troubles and dance the night away.
However, they got the shock of their lives as their party was interrupted by a group of invading Hamas fighters.
Festival goers were seen running away in terror as the militants arrived on solid ground and quickly opened fire.
Ortel was one of the attendees and she told Israel's Channel 12: "Fifty terrorists arrived in vans, dressed in military uniforms.
"They fired bursts, and we reached a point where everyone stopped their vehicles and started running. I went into a tree, a bush like this, and they just started spraying people.
"I saw masses of wounded people thrown around and I'm in a tree and trying to understand what's going on."
She said she first discovered something was seriously wrong when the electricity was shut off.
Gibly revealed to CNN: “We didn’t even have any place to hide because we were at [an] open space. Everyone got so panicked and started to take their stuff.
“It was so terrifying and we didn’t know where to drive to not meet those evil … people. I have a lot of friends that got lost at the forest for a lot of hours and got shot like it was a range."
Esther Borochov revealed to Reuters that she tried to escape the carnage in her car until she was rammed by another vehicle.
She said she had to play dead until Israeli forces arrived and took her to hospital.
A medic who was called out to the scene after the militants had been dispersed told Kan News that 'there are at least 200 bodies of Israelis in the area'.
Yaniv added: "It was a massacre. I've never seen anything like it in my life. It was a planned ambush.
"As people came out of the emergency exits, squads of terrorists were waiting for them there and just started picking them off.
"There were 3,000 people at the event, so they probably knew it. They had intelligence information."
Officials haven't revealed how many people were killed or injured as a result of the music festival raid, however Israeli rescue service Zaka said at least 260 bodies were removed from the venue, according to ABC.
It's been some of the deadliest fighting between Hamas militants and Israeli in decades.
Hundreds of people have been killed on both sides since Hamas fighters launched a series of large-scale attacks over the weekend.
Israel has since retaliated and hit key targets in Gaza.