They took my wife and daughters’: The horror stories of Hamas violence

Four days after Hamas militants went on a rampage that took the world by surprise, Israel increased airstrikes on Gaza and blocked off food, fuel, and other supplies from going into the territory. Hamas, in turn, pledged to kill Israelis it abducted if the country’s military bombs civilian targets in Gaza without warning. Israel previously reported 900 casualties, including soldiers and civilians, while Palestinian authorities reported over 700 deaths in Gaza and the West Bank. Hundreds of people have been taken hostage by the militants. Dozens have lost their family members and friends in the unprecedented attack. Survivors recount horrific details Thousands of young men and women gathered at a vast dusty field of Kibbutz Re’im, about 5.3 kilometers from the wall that separates Gaza from southern Israel, to enjoy the outdoor techno music festival. According to The Associated Press, Maya Alper (25) was standing toward the back of the bar with teams of environmentally conscious volunteers. Just after 6 am, as a light-blue dawn broke and the headliner DJ took the stage, air raid sirens cut through the bass-heavy music. Rockets streaked overhead. Alper jumped into her car and raced to the main road, however, she encountered crowds of stricken festival attendees, shouting at drivers to turn around. Suddenly, after loud noise similar to firecrackers, panicked men and women staggering down the road just in front of her fell to the ground in pools of blood. Those noises were gunshots. [caption id=“attachment_13228932” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Palestinians walk amid the rubble following Israeli airstrikes that razed swaths of a neighborhood in Gaza City. AP[/caption] Videos compiled by Israeli first responders and posted to social media site Telegram showed armed men plunging into the panicked crowd, mowing down fleeing revelers with bursts of automatic fire. Many victims were shot in the back as they ran. Speaking to AP, Arik Nani from Tel Aviv, who had gone to the party to celebrate his 26th birthday, said, “We were hiding and running, hiding and running, in an open field – the worst place you could possibly be in that situation. For a country where everyone in these circles knows everyone, this is a trauma like I could never imagine.” Israeli communities on either side of the festival grounds also came under attack, with Hamas gunmen abducting dozens of men, women, and children — including elderly and disabled people — and killing scores of others in Saturday’s well-planned attack. As the carnage unfolded before her, Alper pulled a few disoriented-looking revelers into her car from the street and accelerated in the opposite direction. One of them said he had lost his wife in the chaos and Alper had to stop him from breaking out of the car to find her. Another said she had just seen Hamas gunmen shoot and kill her best friend. Another rocked in his seat, murmuring over and over, “We are going to die.” In the rear-view mirror, Alper watched the dance floor where she had spent the past ecstatic hours transform into a giant cloud of black smoke. On the first day of the attack, mother Raquel Ohnona Look of Montreal was speaking to her son on a video call as he tried to avoid Hamas militants. 33-year-old Alexandre Look was among the attendees at the music festival, according to CBC News. In the background, she could hear young women sobbing and screaming. She instructed her son to obey Israeli officials and hide somewhere. “And then I heard him tell his friends, ‘They’re coming back. There’s a lot of them. And then all I heard was a lot of gunshots, lots of rounds and then we heard nothing,” she said. The parents then heard sounds of people yelling “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is greatest). The Arabic phrase can also be heard in numerous other videos connected to Saturday’s attack that surfaced online. “I knew. I said, ‘They’re killing my son as we speak,’” the mother recalled. Two of the survivors, who have since communicated with Alex’s parents in video recordings reviewed by CBC News, said, “He was our shield. I swear to you, he was our shield. If it wasn’t for him, all 30 of us in there would be dead.” Another woman in the recording said she had seen Look’s body riddled with bullets after the shooting. At the music festival, a 27-year-old Israeli woman was shot and killed “executive style” while she hid from Hamas shooters. According to News.com.au, Mapal Adam was the younger sister of Ma’ayan Adam, a well-known television host in Israel who was known for her appearances on Dancing With The Stars and her role as an anchor on a prominent news show. [caption id=“attachment_13229052” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] A woman cries during the funeral of Israeli Col. Roi Levy at the Mount Herzl cemetery in Jerusalem on Monday. AP[/caption] Ma’ayan Adam shared information about her sister’s passing on Instagram in a mournful letter. Adam revealed that her sister had sought cover under a truck in an effort to escape the gunmen. Her lover Roey, who had been shot in the back, was holding her as she died. He will hopefully recover. Sharing a picture of Mapal’s cell phone that was captured from beneath the vehicle, she wrote, “On Saturday afternoon, in this seemingly idyllic setting, Mapal, our beloved, concealed herself beneath a truck, playing dead. She held out for hours and didn’t move until terrorists killed her execution style. This is the last photo she took, this is her phone. She and her boyfriend, Roey, moved in together this past week and she was the happiest person in the world,” she wrote, adding, “He was lying next to her [as she lay on the ground], suffered gunshot wounds in the back, and survived to tell us how she died in his arms." She stated in her letter that the family was “crushed to pieces” and going through “pain that I didn’t know existed.” According to AP, the staggering toll from the festival was becoming clear on Monday, as Israel’s rescue service Zaka said paramedics had recovered at least 260 bodies. Festival organizers said they were helping Israeli security forces locate attendees who were still missing. The death toll could rise as teams continue to clear the area. Families of hostages are concerned As Israel strikes back with missile attacks on targets in Gaza, the families grapple with the knowledge that it could come at the cost of their loved ones’ lives. Hamas has warned it will kill one of the 130 hostages every time Israel’s military bombs civilian targets in Gaza without warning.

Tracking his wife’s cell phone gave Yoni Asher his first clue that his family was inside Gaza. When the militants attacked, his wife Doron, their two children Raz (age 5) and Aviv (3 years old), were living with relatives not far from the Gaza border. Yoni told BBC, “Saturday, around 10.30 in the morning, was the last call when I spoke with my wife. She told me that terrorists from Hamas had entered the house. They were in the safe, secure room then the call got disconnected. Later on, I managed to locate her mobile and it was inside Gaza.” He recognised his family in a quick glimpse in a video of individuals being carried onto the back of a truck later that day, which seemed to confirm his worst suspicions. “In the video, I recognized my wife, my two daughters, my two little babies. I don’t know in what terms or what conditions they are held, but you know, the situation is getting much worse. I’m trying to stay calm. I want to believe there is some contact between the diplomats negotiating or something, but we don’t know anything - that is the hardest thing," he told the British outlet. Noam Sagi recalled how his heart dropped as soon as Palestinian media started airing reports from in front of his mother’s house, which is 400 metres from the Gaza border. Ada Sagi, a grandmother of six, was not home when the Israeli Army visited her property on Saturday afternoon. Instead, they discovered blood smears. Speaking to BBC Radio 4, Sagi, a London resident, claimed he believed his mother, an Arabic teacher, was one among those taken hostage. “We are talking about someone, 74 years old, who went into a safe room and [now] she is not there. She is not on the dead list, she is not on the injured list, and it’s a small community… 350 people max and they know each other, so they have gone through the process of identifying everyone,” he told the outlet. He emphasised that because of a recent hip replacement, she was unable to run too far. In the hours after Hamas stormed into Israel, Ahal Besorai tried desperately to reach his sister. There was no answer. Soon after, he learned from witnesses that militants had seized her, her husband and their teenage son had daughter, along with dozens of others. “Should I cry because they are dead already? Should I be happy because maybe they are captured but still alive?” said Besorai, a life coach and resort owner who lives in the Philippines and grew up on Kibbutz Be’eri. “I pray to God every day that she will found alive with her family and we can all be reunited.” Eli Elbag said he woke Saturday to text messages from his daughter, Liri, 18, who’d just began her military training as an Army lookout at the Gaza border. Militants were shooting at her, she wrote. Minutes later, the messages stopped. By nightfall, a video circulated by Hamas showed her crowded into an Israeli military truck overtaken by militants. The face of a hostage next to Liri was marred and bloodied. “We are watching television constantly looking for a sign of her,” Elbag said. “We think about her all the time. All the time wondering if they’re take caring of her, if they’re feeding her, how she’s feeling and what she’s feeling.” Militants posted videos of the hostages, and families were left in agony wondering about their fate. Yosi Shnaider has wrestled with worry since his family members were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, just over a mile from the Gaza fenceline. He saw video of his cousin and her two young boys, held hostage. “It’s like an unbelievable bad movie, like a nightmare,” Shnaider said Monday. “I just need information on if they are alive,” he added. Also missing, his aunt who requires medicine to treat her diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. Since the family found out they were taken hostage, the woman’s sister has been so mortified that she is “like a zombie, alive and dead at the same time” said Shnaider, a real estate agent in the Israeli city of Holon. [caption id=“attachment_13229092” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Smoke rises after the Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip on Monday. AP[/caption] Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, said the country is committed the bringing the hostages home and issued a warning to Hamas, which controls Gaza. “We demand Hamas not to harm any of the hostages," he said. “This war crime will not be forgiven.” Hamas has also said it seeks the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails — some 4,500 detainees, according to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem — in exchange for the Israeli captives. Israel pounds Gaza

Israel said on Tuesday it had reclaimed control of the Gaza border, pounding the enclave with the fiercest air strikes in the 75-year history of its conflict with the Palestinians despite a Hamas threat to execute a captive for each home hit, according to Reuters.

The Benjamin Netanyahu-led country has vowed to take its “mighty revenge” since gunmen rampaged through its towns, leaving streets strewn with bodies in by far the deadliest attack in its history. It has called up hundreds of thousands of reservists and placed the Gaza Strip, a crowded home to 2.3 million people, under a total siege.

The United Nations said 180,000 Gazans had been made homeless, many huddling on streets or in schools. Smoke and flames rose into the morning sky, while bombardment of the roads often made it impossible for emergency crews to reach the scene of strikes.

At the morgue in Gaza’s Khan Younis hospital, bodies were laid on the ground on stretchers with their names written on their bellies. Medics called for relatives to pick up bodies quickly because there was no more space for the dead.

With inputs from agencies