Israel shares footage of 'Hamas shooting at cubicles during festival'

Israeli forces release footage showing ‘Hamas terrorists indiscriminately shooting at toilet cubicles during Nova Music Festival massacre’

• READ MORE: Hamas claims 70 people, mostly women and children, are killed in Israeli airstrike as they fled Gaza City

Distressing footage appears to show Hamas gunmen shooting ‘indiscriminately’ at portaloos during the Nova Music Festival in Re’im on Saturday.

More than 260 people are understood to have died after armed men descended on the event near the border between Gaza and southern Israel last weekend.

Hamas took some 150 Israeli, foreign and dual national hostages back to Gaza in the initial attack, Israel has said.

The IDF shared the footage on social media ahead of an expected ground invasion of Gaza, captioned: ‘This just shows you that Hamas does not care who—they just kill.’ 

It comes as the Israeli military masses troops on the border with Gaza, telling some one million people to evacuate to the southern part of the besieged territory.

The IDF said the footage showed a Hamas gunman shooting at toilets. It was not clear whether anybody was in the portaloos

Charred and damaged cars along a desert road after an attack by Hamas militants at the Tribe of Nova Trance music festival near Kibbutz Re’im in southern Israel on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023

Israel and Hamas have exchanged fire since the latter launched a surprise attack near the border on Saturday.

Just after 6:30am, sirens sounded in Israel’s centre and south amid reports of rocket-fire.

READ MORE: Hamas claims 70 people, mostly women and children, are killed in Israeli airstrike as they fled Gaza City

It was the first direct conflict within Israel’s boundaries since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Armed members of Hamas broke through Israel’s security barrier and raided the Nova Music Festival near Re’im kibbutz.

Israel claims 150 hostages were taken during the initial assault.

Festival-goers have described being ‘confused’ by the sound of rockets and fleeing only when they heard gunfire.

Many became stuck in traffic and fled on foot, hiding in ditches or climbing trees to avoid being targeted.

Nearby, fighting was reported outside the Re’im army base, the HQ of the IDF’s Gaza Division, which changed hands twice during clashes.

As the fighting continued through the day, as many as 1,300 casualties – including 247 soldier – were reported.

Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director of Human Rights Watch, pointed to Hamas ‘shooting civilians en masse, taking hostages, including women and children – undeniably grave abuses of international law, for which there’s no justification.’

‘Massacring civilians is a war crime and there can be no justification for these reprehensible attacks,’ said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary-general.

‘These crimes must be investigated as part of the International Criminal Court’s ongoing investigation into crimes committed by all parties in the current conflict.’

Smoke billows following Israeli strikes amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Gaza, October 13, 2023

At least 1,200, including at least 326 children, have been killed and more than 300,000 displaced, after Israel launched sustained retaliatory strikes after Saturday’s assault by Hamas

Thousands of residential buildings have been destroyed in strikes on Gaza since Saturday

Palestinians flee their homes in the southern Gaza Strip, October 13, 2023

The UN has urged Israel to rethink the order, calling it ‘impossible’ to orchestrate 

Israel retaliated with a ‘complete siege’ of Gaza on Monday and devastating airstrikes, destroying tens of thousands of residential buildings in the Palestinian enclave.

The siege threatens to cut off food, fuel, water and medicine to much of Gaza’s 2.3mn population. 

READ MORE: Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah is killed in Israeli shelling on Lebanon border while six others are injured – and BBC says one of its reporters was ‘stopped and assaulted’ by Israeli police 

In recent days, rhetoric has stepped up around an anticipated ground invasion of Gaza, where Hamas is based, as revenge for Saturday’s attacks. 

Earlier today, more than one million people living in the north were told to evacuate and head south in the next 24 hours.

Rights groups, charities, nations and international bodies have urged Israel to reconsider. 

The UN warned that the order would be calamitous, resulting in a humanitarian disaster whether people can flee or not.

‘The noose around the civilian population in Gaza is tightening. How are 1.1 million people supposed to move across a densely populated warzone in less than 24 hours?’ U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths wrote on social media. 

A statement from the World Health Organisation said: ‘WHO joins the wider United Nations in appealing to Israel to immediately rescind orders for the evacuation of over 1 million people living north of Wadi Gaza. 

‘A mass evacuation would be disastrous—for patients, health workers and other civilians left behind or caught in the mass movement.’ 

More than 80 per cent of Gaza’s population rely on humanitarian aid – which the EU said it would ‘review’ earlier this week – and most lack access to a vehicle.

Much of Gaza’s infrastructure has been damaged, making it difficult to travel by car in any case.

A child carrying an infants car seat evacuates Gaza City following an Israeli warning of increased military operations in the Gaza strip, 13 October 2023

Thousands have died and lost homes and personal possessions since last Saturday

Palestinians evacuate the north as Israel appears to plan a ground invasion

Rights groups have urged Israel to reconsider as Gazans flee the north, on Friday

The United Nations also today said it had been ‘collecting and preserving evidence of war crimes committed by all sides’ since the violence started last week.

That evidence could be added to an investigation by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas in past conflicts.

‘Intentional targeting of civilians and civilian objects without a military necessary reason to do so is a war crime, period,’ said David Crane, an American international law expert and the founding chief prosecutor of the United Nations’ Special Court for Sierra Leone. 

‘And that’s a standard that both sides are held to under international law.’

U.S. President Joe Biden, at a meeting with Jewish leaders Wednesday, said he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ‘that it is really important that Israel, with all the anger and frustration and just – I don’t know how to explain it – that exists is that they operate by the rules of war – the rules of war. And there are rules of war.’ 

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