Arik Nani went to a dance party in southern Israel to celebrate his 26th birthday on Friday night but ended up fleeing a massacre as missiles roared overhead and Hamas gunmen shot down people as they tried to escape.
Thousands of young people attended the Nature Party, near Kibbutz Re'im close to Gaza, which became one of the first"I heard shots from every direction, they were firing at us from both sides," he told Reuters. "Everyone was running and didn't know what to do. It was total chaos.""At one stage me and a friend got into a car with people we didn't know and we just jumped into a car with lots of people and started to drive," said 23 year-old Zohar Maariv.
After hours of running, Nani and his friend finally reached shelter where he heard horrifying stories from others who had escaped. "People speaking about murder they saw in front of their eyes, someone who saw an entire kidnapped family and a small girl who was murdered," he said. They are now identified among dozens of Israelis apparently held captive in Gaza after video circulated showing Noa being carried away on the back of a motorcycle, pleading and reaching out towards her boyfriend being marched alongside on foot.
"We started texting everyone," Amit Parpara, a friend, told Reuters. Other friends at the party managed to escape in their cars, he said but at first it was impossible to get in touch with Noa or Avinatan until he received a text himself.
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