At least 260 people were killed on Saturday October 7 by Hamas attackers during a techno music festival in Reim, Israel. Franceinfo reconstructed the events using amateur images.
This “rave party, it’s the Bataclan”, declared Haïm Korsia, Chief Rabbi of France, Monday October 9, during a meeting of Jewish representatives of France with the Ministry of the Interior. Two days earlier, Hamas terrorists stormed the “Tribe of Nova” techno music festival near the Israeli kibbutz of Reim, about 5 km from the border with Gaza.
How did this festival celebrating unity and love turn into horror? Based on testimonies and amateur videos, franceinfo has reconstructed the precise sequence of the massacre, which is part of a series of attacks by the Palestinian Islamist group on Israel, Saturday October 7. A large-scale offensive, carefully prepared.
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It was around 6:30 a.m. when the assault began. While the party is in full swing, distant plumes of smoke can be seen in the sky. “The music stopped and the sirens sounded. The rockets started filling the sky and we realized we had to run“, says Millet Ben Haim, a 27-year-old festival-goer, on her Instagram account. Security agents begin the evacuation in confusion, as can be seen in this video posted by the OSINTtechnical account on X. The site’s loudspeakers invite festival-goers to reach the emergency exits. Several partygoers, including the young woman, try to escape by car.
An area controlled by Hamas
In the north of the area, local Israeli security forces try to block the commandos and come under fire, relays OSINTtechnical on X. They are poorly armed. But dozens of Hamas men crisscross the site and are positioned on either side of the main road, Route 232, which runs along the festival area. “We took the main road but after a minute someone started shouting that the terrorists were shooting at the people there… So I had to turn back as soon as possible. But after two minutes in the opposite direction, I realized that there were terrorists on the other side too.”explains Millet Ben Haim.
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At 7:40 a.m., a vehicle encountered Hamas commandos to the south of the area. They opened fire twice on the driver, who ended up on the side of the road. The dashcam, the vehicle’s on-board camera, filmed everything. Faced with the impossibility of fleeing by car, several festival-goers escaped on foot into a field, or found refuge behind a tank, in the thickets or in dumpsters. After spending nearly six hours hidden in the bushes, Millet Ben Haim managed to reach a vehicle and was sheltered by soldiers.
Kidnappings, methodical executions and desolation
At the same time, Hamas militants continued their abuses. Several videos, published on Telegram by the group itself, show kidnapping scenes. One of the most viral is the kidnapping of Noa Argamani, taken on a motorcycle in front of her boyfriend Avinatan, whose hands are tied up. In another video, Shani Louk, a 22-year-old German-Israeli festival-goer, appears lifeless and naked alongside her captors. She was recognized by her mother thanks to her hairstyle and tattoos.
At 9:23 a.m., almost three hours after the start of the assault, a festival-goer lying near a gray car was executed. Again, this macabre scene was filmed by a car’s on-board camera. The face of theThe attacker then appears in front of the camera: we can see his green headband, that of the Hamas members. At 12:09 p.m., two men arrived on the stage, searched the pockets of the deceased festival-goer, as we can see in this video posted on X. One of them appears to be carrying loot stolen from the victims. Three minutes later, another unarmed group inspects a suitcase inside the gray vehicle, before abandoning it, according to another video broadcast on the social network.
One of the survivors of the massacre, Sahar Ben-Sela, said his attackers spotted the concrete shelter where he was hiding with 30 other people, threw a grenade before shooting everyone. Tal, 25, also tells the story of these methodical executions to franceinfo.
“They told us everything was fine, that they were soldiers. And then they threw a grenade and then they shot inside the shelter.”
Tal, survivor of the Réïm festivalat franceinfo
The attack by the armed group of Hamas leaves a spectacle of desolation: bodies littering the main road, charred cars. At least 260 people died in Reim, according to Israeli emergency services.