The initial police investigation into the Supernova Festival also implicated the Israeli military in some of the deaths.
Hamas fighters who attacked an Israeli music festival on October 7, killing hundreds of people, likely did not know about the event in advance and targeted them on the spot, Israeli media reported. The report cited police and security sources.
Palestinian fighters initially intended to attack nearby Kibbutz Rem and other villages near the Gaza border, according to a copy of the initial Israeli police report on the attack obtained by Israel’s Channel 12 this week. They learned about the music festival from drones and the air as they parachuted into Israel.
Israeli authorities said Hamas broke through Israel’s heavily guarded barrier, equipped with radar systems and underground sensors, and attacked military posts and villages in southern Israel on Saturday, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Approximately 4,400 people reportedly attended the event.
This Saturday, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that, based on police investigations and interrogations of captured Hamas members, there is “a growing reputation within Israeli security services” that the Hamas organization plans to target the incident. It was reported that there was no such thing.
Police found maps showing the location of targets on the bodies of slain Hamas members, but no map of the location of the festival. An additional finding supporting this assessment, Haaretz said, was that Hamas militants approached the festival from a nearby highway, rather than from the direction of the border.
This event was originally scheduled to be held on Thursday and Friday, but Saturday was added to the schedule only on Tuesday of that week.
The report also revealed that most of the festival participants had managed to leave the event by the time Hamas showed up and the massacre began.
“The majority of people [people who were at the event] A senior police official quoted by Haaretz said the decision was made to break up the event four minutes after the rocket attack, and that some people managed to escape.
A police investigation also revealed that Israeli military helicopters opened fire on the attackers, but also hit some festival-goers. No further details were disclosed, according to Haaretz newspaper.
“The investigation into the incident revealed that [Israeli military] “Combat helicopters arriving at the scene from Ramat David base opened fire on the terrorists, apparently hitting some people who were reveling there,” the news report quoted an anonymous police official as saying.
The police report also revised the death toll from the attack from 270 to 364, including 17 police officers. The number of kidnapped festival participants is said to be 40.
In response to the Hamas offensive, Israel launched ground and air attacks on the Gaza Strip, killing more than 12,000 Palestinians, including 5,000 children, according to the Palestinian Health Authority. Much of the Gaza Strip is in ruins, with residents unable to access enough food, water, fuel and medicine, all of which are currently at extremely low levels due to the total blockade imposed by Israel on the area.
