A 27-year-old Israeli woman was killed “execution style” while playing dead in hopes of being spared by Hamas gunmen who invaded a trance music festival near the border with the Gaza Strip and massacred scores of partygoers on Saturday.
Ma’ayan Adam, 36, a television host who appeared on Israel’s version of “Dancing With The Stars” and anchors a news program on one of the country’s popular TV stations, posted a heartbreaking message to her 300,000 Instagram followers announcing the death of her 27-year-old sister, Mapal Adam.
According to her sister, Mapal Adam was killed while being held by her boyfriend, who suffered gunshot wounds to the back.
He is reportedly expected to survive.
“On Saturday afternoon, in this idyllic setting, Mapal, our baby, hid underneath a truck and pretended as if she were dead,” Ma’ayan Adam wrote in a message on Instagram that included a photo of her sister’s cell phone.
The phone seen in the photo flashed an image of a photograph taken from what appears to be underneath a vehicle.
“She held out for hours and didn’t move until terrorists killed her execution style,” the bereaved sister wrote.
“This is the last photo she took, this is her phone,” Ma’ayan Adam wrote.
“She and her boyfriend, Roey, moved in together this past week and she was the happiest person in the world,” Ma’ayan Adam wrote.
“He was lying next to her [as she lay on the ground], suffered gunshot wounds in the back, and survived to tell us how she died in his arms,” she wrote.
Ma’ayan Adam wrote that the family was “crushed to pieces” and was suffering “pain that I didn’t know existed.”
Mapal Adam was one of thousands of young Israelis who took part in the Tribe of Nova trance music festival near Reim, a kibbutz that lies just a few miles from the fence that rings the Gaza Strip.
Witnesses told media outlets that Hamas gunmen overran the concert area early Saturday morning.
“Around 6:30 in the morning we started hearing explosions,” Raz Gaster, a manager of musical acts who played at the festival, told Billboard.
“We went out of the backstage and we saw a full bombardment everywhere. It was hundreds of rockets and mortars flying from everywhere and explosions all around us.”
Gaster said that security personnel on site told everyone to get down on the floor and put their hands above their heads.
A few minutes later, police “shouted in the microphones, ‘Okay, get in your cars and go’.”
“The moment the policemen said ‘Go now,’ I ran,” Gaster said.
“I didn’t wait, because we know it’s a rocket attack. You need to act quick.”
The Hamas terrorists shot into the crowd of revelers, and searched for as many people as they could in order to take them hostage.
Israeli emergency services reported that they recovered at least 260 bodies from the site on Sunday.
As of Monday morning, Israeli authorities said that more than 800 soldiers and civilians were killed in the surprise Hamas assault that was launched on Saturday morning.
Israeli military operations in Gaza were launched in retaliation, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians, according to officials in the area.
