They went to a music festival to celebrate “friends, love and infinite freedom,” only to find themselves in the midst of a massacre. Some 270 people were killed, and an unknown number injured and taken hostage when Hamas attacked the Supernova trance music festival three miles from Israel’s border with Gaza on October 7th.

The young people who endured hours under fire and saw their friends killed and kidnapped are only now beginning to process that trauma – and the consequences for themselves personally, for Israel and for Gaza. The three survivors our International Editor Lindsey Hilsum met did not know each other before – but have become bound together by their terrifying experience.

Survivors of Israel music festival attack by Hamas describe their trauma