Tel Aviv, 6 August

On 7 October, 2023, Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. That morning, 35-year-old Ethiopian-Israeli Mazal Tazazo attended the Supernova music festival in the Negev Desert, near the Gaza-Israel border, with her friends Daniel Cohen and Yohai Ben Zecharia.

The three were enjoying the event when sirens sounded and gunfire erupted. Hundreds of Hamas militants infiltrated Israeli territory, some arriving by parachute near the festival grounds. The music stopped, and security forces urged the crowd to evacuate. Tazazo and her friends joined others on the main road to escape, but the attackers quickly caught up.

In front of her, terrorists shot and killed Daniel, 25, and Yohai, 23. One struck Tazazo on the head with a gun, leaving her injured and bleeding. She collapsed in a burning field and decided to play dead. “It was a miracle. I was playing dead. My hand was hurt and I was full of blood. They thought I was dead,” she said.

While hiding in the bushes, she felt someone touch her legs and start tying them with ropes. Two men spoke in Arabic before one checked if she was alive. Believing she was dead, they left her. For eight hours, she lay there until fellow festivalgoers found her and took her to the hospital.

At one point, she saw a policeman but stayed hidden.

“Most of the policemen there were killed,” she said. “The policeman I saw, I tried to find him later, but couldn’t. I don’t know if he’s dead or survived, but I think of him a lot. He didn’t know how to help me and was frustrated.”

When asked what gives her the courage to speak out, Tazazo said it was her son. “He’s 11 years old. I want to make sure he lives in a safe world. Now we don’t live in a safe world.”

On that morning, over 360 young people were killed at the Supernova festival, part of a wider assault by Hamas and allied militant groups on Israeli communities near the Gaza border. In total, Israeli authorities say 1,195 people were killed and at least 251 abducted into Gaza.