The Supernova festival in the desert of southern Israel was in full swing when it was stormed by Hamas in Saturday’s surprise attack.
260 dead have been found.
Swedish Eva Cheil, who lives in Israel, misses her grandchildren after the attack.
– If they are not dead, they are in Gaza, she tells TV4 Nyheterna.
The music festival went on all night and into the wee hours. When Hamas fired rockets at 6:30 a.m. local time, the festival was still full of people.
– The last call the parents received was half past seven in the morning when the rockets started going off, says Eva Cheil, about her missing grandchildren.
Her two grandsons Noa and Gideon, both in their 20s, have not been heard from since Saturday morning.
– Yesterday I sent my children to different hospitals in Israel to see if they were injured. It’s such chaos here, nothing works as it should.
“There are only two options now”
After the air raids on Saturday morning, the electricity at the festival was cut and the music was replaced by gunfire. Video footage from Saturday morning shows hundreds of people running away through the desert.
Roughly 3,000 festival-goers were there, and 260 have been found dead.
Now many are desperately searching for their family members.
– There are only two options now. Either they are among the dead from the festival, or they are trapped in Gaza. Because there is no chance that my grandchildren, if they managed to escape, would not have heard, says grandmother Eva Cheil.
Hoping for a miracle
It is a difficult wait for the family. The parents are two of many who have had to find things from their children with DNA traces on them to hand over to the police who identify the dead.
– The only thing we do is sit and wait and hope that they will have survived this. My daughter-in-law and my son refuse to give up on the idea of their return. What keeps us going is that a miracle must have happened and we get them back, says Eva Cheil.
– We all feel bad. My son and his wife are completely devastated.