AS dawn broke and the rave neared its climax, the music stopped and festival goers gazed up at what they thought was a firework display in the sky.
But within moments they realised to their horror that the bright lights overhead were not part of the entertainment – but rockets which signalled the start of a brutal massacre.
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Miraculously Ziv Abud survived the bloodbath – hidden from Hamas gunmen beneath a pile of dead bodies and dismembered body parts.
The atrocity on 7 October 2023 left 364 people murdered and 44 others taken hostage.
That day was the start of one of the most deadly massacres in the history of the bloody Middle East conflict.
As Hamas began their grisly campaign of terror, gunmen descended on paragliders into the desert festival and rained bullets down on innocent revellers.
In the confusion and chaos that followed, terrified partygoers sheltered under stages, in fridges, in toilets, bushes, cars and even a skip full of rubbish.
They witnessed widespread slaughter ‘like Squid Game’ as dozens of hostages were seized.
Ziv, 26, told The Sun of her harrowing ordeal ahead of a new documentary We Will Dance Again: Surviving October 7 airing on BBC1 tomorrow.
She attended the festival with her fiance Eliya Cohen, nephew Amit and his girlfriend Karin – today, she is the only one of their group left alive.
“Eliya and I had never been apart since the say we met, now I fall asleep in tears and wake up in tears every day,” she said.
The couple danced joyfully with their friends all night but when the music stopped, screeching to an abrupt halt at around 6am, they quickly realised something was very wrong.
“Eliya is a music producer so it was very normal for us to spend the weekend at a festival, but when we arrived I thought, ‘Wow this is the biggest music festival I have seen in Israel for five years,'” she recalls.
“As it started to get light the music stopped and we were all trying to figure out what was happening.
“Everyone was looking up at the sky, people thought it was fireworks and so at first I was very calm, but then I realised they were rockets and we had about 15 seconds before they fell.
“That was the moment I panicked.
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“Then we saw a man dressed in black running towards us firing an automatic weapon screaming, ‘Either you run now and survive or you stay here and it’s over for you.’
“There were a lot of police officers but they all told us to do something different so I got more panicked because the police are supposed to save us.
“We tried to leave.
“We managed to get inside our car and out of the site on to the road, but there was a lot of traffic.
“We drove for six minutes and then we got a phone call from Eliya’s cousin, she told us that someone was shooting up ahead.
“She told us to get off the road.
Either you run now and survive or you stay here and it’s over for you.
Long live Abud
“We thought maybe they were shooting from the border, we didn’t realise there were terrorists inside Israel.
“We saw a small shelter at the side of the road, without doors or anything, we were the first in there but more and more people came.
“We could not leave because there were terrorists outside with guns and grenades.”
Being stuck right at the back of the shelter would ultimately save Ziv’s life when terrorists started bombing.
She went on: “There was one Muslim guy outside trying to save himself but instead they tortured him for 10 minutes.
“We heard him scream and yell and cry, then we heard a shot, and then silence.
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“Then the first grenade was thrown inside the shelter.”
Terrorists threw seven live hand grenades but a British artist living in Jerusalem called Aner bravely picked them all up and hurled them back out to explode on the road.
But the hero was killed when the eighth grenade exploded in his hand.
Then an American man called Hersh Goldberg-Polin, sheltering with them, was grabbed by militia, thrown into a pick-up truck and taken as a hostage into Gaza.
He was one of six hostages whose bodies were discovered by Israeli troops in a tunnel under Rafah in August – murdered after more than 300 days in captivity.
This is the feeling of dying.
Long live Abud
“When the grenade exploded inside the shelter that was the most terrible moment,” Ziv continued.
“All the people fell back on me, there was a lot of screaming, a lot of crying.
“Then I heard Eliya for the first time, he was screaming and told me his leg was injured – he grabbed my hand so hard it was painful.
“I couldn’t feel my body because there were so many bodies piled on top of me and I thought to myself, ‘I’m dying – this is the feeling of dying’.”
At that point Ziv lost consciousness for around three hours – and avoided being kidnapped as the gunmen assumed she was already dead.
Astonishingly, she woke up at around 11am.
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But to her horror she was trapped under a pile of dismembered body parts.
“I realised I was alive but under a lot of bodies and two of them were Karin and Amit,” sobbed Ziv.
“They were murdered inside the shelter.
“I was trying to figure out where Eliya was because I couldn’t see him, I tried to find his shoes or shirt, or bag or wallet.
“I found nothing and an hour later one of the survivors said the terrorists had grabbed people who were still alive.”
“They took him, I realised they had taken Eliya.”
When all the hostages are home then I can find a place to think about what happened.
Ziv
Finally, at around 3pm, Ziv was rescued.
“The guy who came in was the father of one of the people that was inside, he had called his dad,” she said.
“By the time he got there his son was murdered.
“But he saved us anyway.
“When we got to the hospital I saw pictures from Gaza Now channel, they were showing pictures of Eliya and the headline was ‘Israeli man kidnapped to Gaza.’
“Since then we have heard nothing.
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“We just have that picture from the 7th of October showing he was alive inside Gaza.
“I don’t have a message for the terrorists, I don’t talk with terrorists and I try not to think about that day because it makes me very angry.
“I lost a lot of friends that day and I need to be focused and stay strong for the fight to bring Eliya home.
“When all the hostages are home then I can find a place to think about what happened.”
The trance party which had been billed as a celebration of “peace and love” is now etched forever in the collective psyche of Israel.
Many are still missing and at least 50 survivors have killed themselves in the aftermath, unable to cope with the haunting memories.
Timeline of the Israel-Hamas war
7 October 2023 Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups carried out attacks on civilians in Israel. Over 1200 people were killed and 240 taken hostage
28 October 2023 Israeli forces invaded the Gaza Strip, launching air strikes and ground attacks resulting in catastrophic loss of life
24 November 2023 A ceasefire was called, and lasted until 11 January 2024
12 January 2024 US and UK launched airstrikes against Yemen, bringing the death toll to 23,708
6 May 2024 Israeli forces seized control of the Rafah crossing, bringing the death toll to 34, 844
13 July 2024 98 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli attack on Al-Mawasi
17 September 2024 Pagers and walkie talkies exploded simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria
The Israeli authorities compared the outrage to the worst IS atrocities and released a deliberately blurred picture of bodies piled up in a tent.
The attack provoked Israel to launch what has become a catastrophic siege, bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip.
The harrowing accounts from Nova Festival are retold in the BBC documentary We Will Dance Again: Surviving October 7th, which airs on Thursday.
It is a shocking account of the assault on party goers with a minute-by-minute account of the day.
The deeply moving testimony of survivors is interspersed with unseen CCTV, mobile phone and car dashcam footage, as well as shocking GoPro footage from Hamas’ own live stream and calls to emergency services.
The film shares the very telling personal stories of those who lived, those taken hostage and those who died – as confusion turned into fear, and then chaos when Hamas arrived and began to slaughter anyone in sight.
We Will Dance Again: Surviving October 7th, which airs on Thursday.
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