Nova music festival massacre

Overview

The Nova music festival massacre was the killing and abduction of people attending an outdoor music event near Kibbutz Re’im in Israel on October 7, 2023. It formed part of the October 7 attacks, a coordinated assault on Israeli communities, military positions, roads, and public gatherings led by Hamas, a terrorist organization. Thousands of people had gathered at Nova for music and dancing. Most attendees were Israelis, while others had come from abroad. The attack began as a mass rocket barrage sent attendees toward shelters and exits. Hundreds of armed attackers then reached the festival area and its escape routes. They murdered people on the grounds, in nearby fields, in vehicles, and inside roadside shelters, and kidnapped others to Gaza.

Nova was the deadliest single site of the October 7 attacks and the deadliest concert attack in history. One published account records 378 people killed and 44 taken hostage. Other published counts differ: an account of the military investigation gives 364 killed and 44 abducted, while the Nova exhibition used figures of 405 killed and 45 kidnapped. Those figures reflect different published tallies and should be read with their stated scope. Most people killed at Nova were younger than 30. The scale of the deaths does not convey the individual lives lost, the experiences of those who escaped, or the captivity endured by those taken into Gaza.

The massacre unfolded across a wider area than the festival grounds. Route 232, which passes communities including Kfar Aza and Be’eri, became an attempted escape route for people fleeing Nova, another nearby festival, and surrounding communities. Attackers fired on vehicles, killed drivers, pursued people running through fields and wooded areas, and threw grenades into shelters where people had sought protection from rockets. The distribution of victims across the grounds and roads is central to understanding how an event that began with people seeking shelter became a prolonged hunt for civilians.

Background

Nova was an outdoor music festival held near Kibbutz Re’im, close to Gaza. Its audience had gathered through the night for electronic music and dancing. The festival’s location had changed two days before October 7. Israeli military authorities approved its permit before the attack despite concerns within their ranks about possible rocket fire. The later investigation of that decision examined how the event was approved and how information about it was shared with troops assigned to the border area. The late change of venue also became a feature of false claims that the massacre had been staged; it was an ordinary fact of the festival’s planning, not evidence of a fabricated attack.

The festival took place during a Jewish holiday weekend. On the morning of October 7, Hamas and allied attackers launched an assault into Israel by land, sea, and air under cover of extensive rocket fire. Their targets included communities, military facilities, festivals, and adjacent roads. Nova’s open site, large crowd, and limited routes away from the area exposed attendees to the initial rockets and to attackers who subsequently reached the grounds and surrounding roads. People who left in the first minutes of the alarm entered a road network where other civilians were also trying to escape.

At 6:29 a.m., the opening rocket barrage interrupted the festival. Attendees moved toward cars, nearby roads, and roadside rocket shelters. Some initially sought cover from rockets, then faced gunfire as attackers arrived. The shift from an aerial alarm to armed assaults on the ground left people making urgent decisions with little knowledge of where attackers were positioned. Friends separated, cars became trapped or abandoned, and groups hid wherever they could: in vegetation, beneath structures, behind equipment, and inside waste containers. The attack continued after people had left the dance area, making departure from the grounds no guarantee of safety.

The attack

Hundreds of terrorists attacked thousands of festivalgoers in the forested area near Re’im. They hunted people across the Nova grounds and adjacent fields and roads. Attackers shot people hiding beneath the stage, behind the bar, and inside mobile toilets and waste containers. Others were shot while running on foot through fields, wooded areas, and open ground. Survivors’ accounts describe repeated efforts to hide or flee as gunfire drew closer. The killing took place at numerous points rather than in one confrontation at the main festival site.

Route 232 carried many of those trying to get away. Attackers ambushed fleeing cars with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades and murdered drivers and passengers along the road. Roadside rocket shelters offered protection from overhead fire but became traps when terrorists reached them and threw grenades inside. Off-duty soldier Aner Shapiro stood at one such shelter and repeatedly threw grenades back out while other festivalgoers sheltered there. He was killed. His actions became one of the documented efforts by people at the scene to protect others amid the attack.

Individual escape attempts show the range of circumstances faced by festivalgoers. Hadar and her friend Shira tried to flee, abandoned their car under gunfire, and hid for hours in a dumpster with other young people. Another attendee, Guy, fled with ten friends in a jeep. Terrorists attacked the vehicle; he escaped wounded and hid behind a tree. Amit Buskila and her companions drove toward Miflasim Junction, where a large group of terrorists ambushed civilian vehicles. She hid beneath a car and called her uncle Shimon. Her final words in that call expressed love for her family. She was murdered, and her body was taken to Gaza before being recovered in an Israeli military operation and returned for burial.

Or and Einav Levy had arrived at Nova shortly before the sirens. They fled to a shelter, where Einav was murdered. Hamas abducted Or to Gaza, leaving their three-year-old son Almog in the care of his grandparents. Omer Wenkert, 23, told his parents he was terrified before contact ended at 7:50 a.m.; he was abducted from the festival. Maya Regev, 21, was shot in the leg while trying to escape and was also taken captive. Romi was shot in the hand as she fled before her abduction. Such accounts trace the attack from its opening minutes through the separation of families and the disappearance of captives into Gaza.

The massacre was also marked by sexual violence. Investigators documented a pattern of sexual violence against women and girls across October 7 attack sites, with significant evidence concerning Nova and its surrounding area. Testimony presented in international proceedings described a survivor witnessing the rape and murder of a woman at the festival. The record of sexual violence belongs alongside the documented shootings, grenade attacks, and kidnappings; it was part of the violence inflicted during the October 7 assault.

Victims

The dead included festivalgoers, people working at the event, and people caught along escape routes. Yaniv Sarudi, a 26-year-old Israeli, was murdered at Nova. Or Ziv attended with his friend Ben Bernstein; both were murdered. Their names, like those of other victims, identify people whose lives extended beyond the circumstances of their deaths. Most of those killed were younger than 30, and an estimated 50 to 60 percent were killed while fleeing the festival site. Memorial accounts preserve individual identities against efforts to reduce the victims to a casualty figure or blame them for the attack.

Abduction made the consequences of the massacre continue well beyond October 7. Hamas took festivalgoers to Gaza and held them in apartments and tunnels. Noa Argamani and her partner Avinatan Or had hidden in a ditch before their captors found them. Israeli special forces rescued Argamani on June 8, 2024. Or remained captive for 738 days, spending much of that time alone in a cramped tunnel cell. He was released with fellow Nova hostage Eitan Mor in a hostage exchange on October 14, 2025. Their differing paths—rescue in one case and release after prolonged captivity in the other—illustrate the years over which the hostage crisis extended.

Other captives described injury and coercion. Maya Regev said captors deliberately caused pain while treating the wound she had sustained fleeing Nova. Surgery during captivity left her injured leg at an angle that made walking difficult. Omer Shem Tov was held for more than 400 days and described starvation, beatings, isolation, prolonged darkness, and threats. He refused a gunpoint demand to help collapse a building on Israeli soldiers. Eliya Cohen was held for 505 days; another captive travelling with him toward Gaza was killed after trying to escape. Ron Krivoi escaped after an Israeli Air Force strike hit the Gaza apartment where he was held, evaded recapture for several days, and was then caught and beaten by people in Gaza.

Families faced prolonged uncertainty about relatives who had disappeared during the attack. Some people initially counted among the missing were later confirmed murdered, with their bodies held in Gaza. Guy, who had escaped wounded from the attack on his friends’ jeep, was confirmed murdered on November 30, 2023. His body was returned to Israel on October 13, 2025, in the deal to end the war. The return of bodies for burial, like the release or rescue of living captives, remained part of the massacre’s aftermath long after the shooting at Nova ended.

Perpetrators and responsibility

Hamas led the October 7 assault and its terrorists carried out the massacre at Nova with other attackers. Hamas members recorded atrocities on body-mounted GoPro cameras. One participant, Tamer Mohammad Ibrahim Al-Zabaq, infiltrated Israel and took part in the massacre. He was identified as involved in the abduction and desecration of Shani Louk’s body. The attackers’ own recordings, together with survivor testimony, hostage accounts, and the documented locations of bodies and damaged vehicles, establish what happened at the festival and along the routes away from it.

Hamas also advanced a false account claiming that Israeli soldiers had disguised themselves as Hamas attackers and killed festivalgoers. That accusation reverses the roles of perpetrator and victim and is contradicted by recordings made by Hamas attackers and by the evidence from the attack sites. A separate video circulated as supposed proof that Israeli helicopters had fired on Nova attendees showed Israeli airstrikes against Hamas terrorists in Gaza on October 8, the day after the massacre. The festival’s late change of location was likewise used to support false staging claims. None changes the documented responsibility of Hamas and the other attackers who entered the festival area.

The massacre targeted people gathered for music, along with those who tried to escape. Accounts of victims and survivors establish deaths at the festival, on roads, and in shelters. The available published tolls differ in their totals, but each records hundreds killed and dozens taken hostage. Treating a fabricated denial as an equally supported account would obscure the attack’s perpetrators and the people they murdered or abducted.

Response

Rescue began while the attack was still underway. Civilians, including people who had already reached relative safety, returned toward danger to help others. Youssef Ziadna, an Arab Bedouin driver, received a call for help as the assault began and drove back toward the festival area. He rescued 30 people and took them to a nearby kibbutz under fire. His actions demonstrated the importance of individual decisions during a period when roads were dangerous and many festivalgoers could not reach organized assistance.

Israeli forces later investigated the failures that left the festival exposed, including the permit approval and the movement of information between authorities and troops deployed near the border. Military operations also addressed the hostage crisis. Special forces rescued Noa Argamani in June 2024, while other hostages were released through exchanges after long captivity. Israeli operations recovered the body of Amit Buskila, allowing her burial in Israel. These responses occurred across different stages of the aftermath and could not undo the deaths, injuries, and captivity caused by the attack.

Survivors and relatives also organized care outside military and government efforts. In the months after the massacre, survivors and victims’ families met weekly for trance therapy. The meetings used the music associated with Nova as one means of gathering, grieving, and supporting people who had shared the event or lost loved ones there. Survivors’ public accounts added detail about escape, hiding, injury, and captivity, and helped families and audiences understand what happened beyond the numerical toll.

Remembrance

The festival grounds became a place of mourning. Families and visitors brought flowers, planted trees, and placed individual placards for those murdered. At the first anniversary in 2024, commemorations took place at Nova and in nearby communities. The site’s memorials mark both the concentration of deaths at the festival and the separate lives represented by each name. Remembering victims individually answers denial and minimization by preserving who they were, how they lived, and what was taken from their families.

The Nova Music Festival Exhibition carried remembrance beyond Israel. Titled “6:29 AM: the Moment the Music Stood Still,” it presented the celebration before the attack, the destruction that followed, and tributes to those killed, abducted, and survived. It reached audiences in New York and Los Angeles in 2024; its New York run drew 113,000 visitors over three months. The exhibition’s title fixes the opening rocket barrage in public memory as the moment the festival changed from a gathering for music into the site of a massacre.

Commemoration has continued through testimony, public gatherings, and the care shown by survivors and families for one another. The deadliest concert attack in history is remembered through its overall toll and through accounts of people such as Yaniv Sarudi, Or Ziv, Ben Bernstein, Amit Buskila, Einav Levy, and Aner Shapiro. Those accounts also preserve the actions of people who protected or rescued others, including Shapiro at the roadside shelter and Ziadna on the roads near Nova. Together, the memorial site and the exhibition connect the physical places of the massacre with the people whose lives and families it changed.