A British citizen is missing after Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked a music festival near Gaza, Israel’s UK embassy says.
Jake Marlowe, 26, went missing early on Saturday, the embassy said.
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His mother, Lisa, told the Jewish News he was providing security at a party and she last heard from her son via text message.
“He was doing security at this rave and called me at 4.30 to say all these rockets were flying over,” she said.
“Then, at about 5.30, he texted to say, ‘signal very bad, everything OK, will keep you updated I promise you’ and that he loves me.”
Close friend Daniel Aboudy told The Independent Marlowe and a friend sent a voice message saying they were desperately trying to evacuate people as gunmen stormed the festival.
“We are seeing it in front of our eyes, we are rounding up the people from the party now,” Marlowe said in the message, according to a transcript shared with The Independent.
“We are on an ATV and we are telling everyone to get the f*** outta there.”
The Hamas militants broke out of the blockaded Gaza Strip and rampaged through nearby Israeli communities on Saturday, killing 700 Israelis and abducting dozens more.
The Hamas fighters’ rampage through Israeli towns on Saturday was the deadliest such incursion since Egypt and Syria’s attacks in the Yom Kippur war 50 years ago and has threatened to ignite another conflagration in the never-ending conflict.
Israel has since pounded the Palestinian enclave, killing hundreds of people in retaliation for one of the bloodiest attacks in its history.
Israeli air strikes hit housing blocks, tunnels, a mosque and homes of Hamas officials in Gaza, killing more than 400 people, including 20 children, in keeping with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge of “mighty vengeance”.
“We’re going to be attacking Hamas severely and this is going to be a long, long haul,” an Israeli military representative told reporters.
‘The war should stop’
Beyond blockaded Gaza, Israeli forces and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia exchanged artillery and rocket fire, while in Egypt two Israeli tourists were shot dead along with a guide.
Appeals for restraint came from around the world, although the United States and its European allies largely stood by Israel while Iran, Hezbollah and protesters in various Middle Eastern countries lauded Hamas.
In southern Israel on Sunday, Hamas gunmen were still fighting Israeli security forces more than 24 hours after their surprise, multipronged assault of rocket barrages and bands of gunmen who overran army bases and invaded border towns.
Israel’s military, which said it had regained control of most infiltration points along security barriers, killed hundreds of attackers and took dozens more prisoner.
The military said it had deployed tens of thousands of soldiers around Gaza, a narrow strip that is home to 2.3 million Palestinians, and was starting to relocate Israelis living around the frontier.
“This is my fifth war. The war should stop. I don’t want to keep feeling this,” said Qassab al-Attar, a Palestinian wheelchair user in Gaza whose brothers carried him to shelter.
At least 700 people were killed, Israeli media reported, children among them.
Israel has not released an official toll.
The debris from Saturday’s attack still lay around southern Israeli towns and border communities on Sunday morning and Israelis were reeling from the sight of bloodied bodies lying on suburban streets, in cars and in their homes.
About 30 missing Israelis attending a dance party that was targeted during Saturday’s attack emerged from hiding on Sunday, Israeli media reported.
Palestinian fighters took dozens of hostages back into Gaza, including both soldiers and civilians, children and elderly among them.
“The cruel reality is Hamas took hostages as an insurance policy against Israeli retaliatory action, particularly a massive ground attack and to trade for Palestinian prisoners,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Hamas fired more rocket salvos into Israel on Sunday.
Israeli air strikes on Gaza began soon after the Hamas attack and continued overnight and into Sunday, destroying the group’s offices and training camps, but also houses and other buildings.
The Palestinian health ministry said 413 Palestinians, including 78 children, were killed and 2300 people were wounded since Saturday.
The United Nations said more than 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza have sought refuge in schools it runs.
It appealed for the creation of humanitarian corridors to bring food into Gaza.
The escalation comes against a backdrop of surging violence between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule, opposed by Hamas that wants Israel destroyed.
Conditions in the West Bank have worsened under Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist government with more Israeli raids and assaults by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages, and the Palestinian Authority called for an emergency Arab League meeting.
Gazans have lived under an Israeli-led blockade for 16 years, since Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007.
“How many times have we warned you that the Palestinian people have been living in refugee camps for 75 years, and you refuse to recognise the rights of our people?,” Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said.
– With Reuters
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