With candles, prayers and music, commemorations for the October 7 attack began on Sunday at a ceremony to mark the first anniversary of the Hamas attack at the Nova Music Festival in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Photos of those killed appeared on a screen at the entrance to the ceremony as hundreds of people gathered at a makeshift shrine to light candles, leave handwritten notes or simply hug each other.
“Coming to this event one year after this terrible massacre on October 7, it’s very touching, it’s very breathtaking,” said Solly Laniado, one of the event’s organizers.
“Three days ago, we were not going to hold events at all,” he said, citing a barrage of rocket warnings and last week’s missile attack on Tel Aviv, which left many people and large parts of the usually lively city on the sidelines. Have gone. Empty.
The anniversary comes as Israel is embroiled in a fresh war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and is preparing to retaliate against Tehran, raising fears of a more widespread conflict.
Anticipation is rising over when and how Israel will respond to Iran’s missile attack last week, casting a shadow of uncertainty over the commemorations.
“It’s a hard day,” said Omri Sassi, 35, one of the producers of last year’s festival who survived the attack.
By his own estimate, he lost about 50 friends that day, including an uncle, a pregnant cousin, and her husband.
attack of violence
The two-day festival in the grounds around Kibbutz Reim was just beyond the Gaza border in southern Israel and was attended by more than 3,000 people on 6 and 7 October.
At least 370 people were killed in Nova Rave in the Negev desert, making it the deadliest location during the October 7 attack.
Footage from the day filmed by Hamas showed militants mass shooting festival-goers as they attempted to flee and taking others hostage, without heavily armed Hamas fighters. Were moving towards some protest area.
After the attack, the festival site was left largely untouched with dozens of burned vehicles and abandoned tents, sleeping bags and clothing scattered across the grounds.
The attack on the festival was part of an onslaught of violence by Palestinian Hamas militants, resulting in the deaths of 1,205 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on the latest official Israeli figures.
Approximately 251 people were captured and taken hostage to the Gaza Strip, of whom 97 are still being held in captivity in the coastal area, 37 of whom have been declared dead by Israeli forces.
During a week-long ceasefire in late November, 105 hostages were released in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
Hours after the October 7 attack, Israel launched a massive military offensive on Gaza, reducing large parts of the territory to rubble and killing almost all of its 2.4 million residents at least once amid an unrelenting humanitarian crisis. Everyone was displaced.
In Gaza, at least 41,870 people, most of them civilians, have been killed since the start of the Israeli offensive, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.
The United Nations has considered these figures reliable.
But as the anniversary approaches, for many it becomes the latest marker of a year tainted by trauma, loss and the ongoing war.
“It’s not easy to think too much about it,” Sassi said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)