Israeli festival survivor hid from Hamas gunmen in caravan

(NewsNation) — Yuval Uzan was among 30 people who hid inside a caravan at the Israeli music festival Saturday when Hamas militants tore through the crowd, killing at least 260 people.

Uzan was among the survivors who were attending the Supernova music festival, where some 3,500 young people gathered in the Re’im kibbutz in southern Israel, only a few miles from the border with Gaza. Many are still missing, possibly captured and taken back to Gaza.

Yarin Weltsam, who spoke to “Morning in America” on behalf of Uzan, who doesn’t speak English, explained that when the attack first began Saturday morning with a barrage of rockets flying overhead, Uzan didn’t know what was happening.

Then, Uzan and her friends ran and got into a car, but once they got to the road, there was an ambush and their car was riddled with bullets.

Uzan was shot in her side.

“They found an ambulance that was at the party. They then took care of her a little bit there. They went into some sort of other makeshift hospital. All of a sudden, more terrorists came. The paramedics told them to just flee, to just run for their lives,” Weltsam explained.

Uzan and her friends found a caravan and hid inside as it was being riddled with bullets.

“The biggest miracle was that the terrorist didn’t open the door and actually see 30 people lying on top of each other in that caravan,” Weltsma said.

Uzan managed to escape, but shortly after that a vehicle she was in was blown up by an RPG.

“Yuval was up in flames, she had to roll on the ground in order to extinguish herself,” Weltsam said. “They then found an abandoned tank which, unfortunately, we probably think that those soldiers were either kidnapped or killed. And they were basically around that for four hours.”

Uzan said she’s “more stable” and is still in a wheelchair and her family has to help her, but the psychological pain is more unbearable than the physical.

“She’s in obviously a lot of excruciating pain, but perhaps the real pain is the psychological pain — the tremors at night, the nightmares, just constant feelings that she can hear what is still going on and just kind of reliving that moment with a lot of a lot of terror,” Weltsam translated.

Israeli rescue services say at least 260 bodies have been recovered from the site of the festival, but the death toll may rise as searches for the missing continue, Al Jazeera reported.

The attack is believed to be the worst civilian massacre in Israeli history.