At site of musical festival massacre by Hamas, signs of death and panic are everywhere
Journalists allowed inside grounds for first time since 260 Israelis killed
Spread about in the mix of rolling hills, grassy fields and the evergreen trees of southern Israel are the remnants of everything those who would be killed when Hamas militants stormed a music festival in southern Israel last weekend had brought with them.
Scattered shoes and clothing lay by unfinished meals on picnic tables. Lawn chairs, camping supplies, parking passes and knapsacks are strewn everywhere. And the cars and vans driven to get to the music festival — held just outside Israel's border with the Gaza Strip — still stand where they were abandoned.
Some of the cars are wildly askew in farmers' fields with their doors left swung open. Others are in roadside ditches. But most are still in the campground parking area, many of them burned to the point of meltdown.
Completing the picture: Countless bullet holes, torn metal, shards of windshield glass — and dried pools of blood where the dead and dying fell.
The Israel Defence Forces this week took a handful of journalists, including CBC News, to the site of the Supernova music festival where 260 young people were massacred and others kidnapped in a surprise attack by Hamas.
Hamas's assault, and days of heavy rocket fire since, have killed more than 1,300 people in Israel, including 247 soldiers. Citizens of several countries, including Canada, have been killed.
More than 1,500 people have been killed in Israel's retaliatory attacks on Gaza and on Thursday, Israel said its siege of Gaza would remain in place until Hamas militants free the roughly 150 people taken hostage.
At the music festival grounds, the bodies had long since been taken away by Israeli authorities, but everything else was left in place. CBC News had about an hour to document it.
Signs that people weren't aware of threat
There are signs that those in the crowd must have doubted there was any threat until it was too late.
All the bits and pieces left scattered in any other circumstance would point simply to a good time having been had by all.
Widely seen social media video shows some of the militants coming in by air, others on motorcycles while some on foot waited in the nearby trees to shoot people as they unknowingly raced away from the first threat but toward those who'd now kill them.
The fields were mostly silent as CBC News was at the site, except for the artillery fire not far off and the Israeli fighter jets passing overhead targeting Hamas strongholds in nearby Gaza.
The sound of gunshots
Occasionally, there was the sound of the country's Iron Dome defence system intercepting Hamas rockets still targeting Israel.
Meanwhile, as the journalists wandered the festival grounds, IDF soldiers patrolled the fields with weapons drawn.
Then there was a gunshot, and then another.
IDF soldiers confronted a man who had been brandishing a knife, CBC News is told. On his knees, surrounded by soldiers, he peeled off his T-shirt in an apparent attempt to show he's otherwise unarmed. Tensions eased. Journalists were later told he was a Bedouin.
Earlier in the day, the media's access to the site was delayed because Israeli forces said they believed there might have been a Hamas militant in the area.
The country has declared the border in this part of Israel secured, but it's still an active war zone.
It is believed there remain an unknown number of tunnels underneath the Gaza border through which further militants can travel.
The music festival site is just a few kilometres from the communities of Be'eri, Kfar Aza and Sderot, each of which suffered their own massacres last Saturday.
As night fell at the festival grounds, CBC News was told to leave quickly.
There are more vehicles on the way back that had been targeted and stopped, mid-escape. Lying next to a looted and bullet-ridden car was an abandoned motorcycle.
It bore no licence plate, just a sticker on its rear wheel bumper with a red inscription in Arabic.
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With files from The Associated Press