Israeli dance party survivors recount attack

BEERSHEBA – The thousands of young Israelis had spent the night dancing at an outdoor rave, many clad in tie-dye T-shirts and crop tops.

But the morning brought with it a massacre.

Just after dawn on Saturday, hundreds of Palestinian militants bulldozed their way through the barricades between Gaza and Israel, drove into scores of Israeli towns along the border and sped through the farmland where the rave was reaching its sunrise climax.

The militants gunned down more than 100 ravers and kidnapped others, as they sprinted through the open fields, according to two senior Israeli officials.

The terrifying attack was just one of the multiple locations hit on Saturday morning by the most coordinated assault inside Israel ever carried by militants. At least 260 bodies would later be found at the festival site, according to Israeli rescue service Zaka.

“In the area where the party took place, and at the party itself, it could be estimated that there were 260 bodies,” said Moti Bukjin, Zaka spokesman, based on the number of trucks that ferried away the corpses.

Video verified by The New York Times showed militants driving off on a motorcycle with an Israeli woman squeezed between them, screaming as her boyfriend was marched off on foot, his arm wrenched behind his back.

Many of those who survived did so by hiding in nearby bushes, some of them for hours.

Bullets whistled overhead and shots resounded all around, recounted Andrey Peairie, 35, one of the survivors. He described crawling up to the top of a nearby hill to get a better sense of what was happening.

“Smoke and flames and gunfire,” said Peairie, a tech worker. “I have a military background, but I never was in a situation like this.”

So began one of the bloodiest weekends in Israeli and Palestinian history, the full details of which started to emerge on Sunday as survivors recounted the most complex and brazen attack on their nation since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

About 700 Israelis were killed and at least 150 taken hostage by Palestinian militants, according to a preliminary assessment shared by a senior Israeli military official.

Videos circulated of children and grandparents kidnapped from their homes in