Israel military says situation ‘dire’ in south as 260 bodies retrieved from festival

About 260 bodies have been recovered from the site of a music festival in southern Israel that was attacked by Hamas militants, as Israel’s military said fighting was ongoing in the region and described the situation as “dire”.

Late on Sunday, Israeli rescue service Zaka said it had retrieved hundreds of bodies from the Supernova festival, near Kibbutz Re’im close to Gaza. Shocking images and video from the site showed festival-goers running for their lives across open fields as Hamas gunmen attacked them and took hostages.

Early on Monday, Lt Col Jonathan Conricus, spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), said in a video message “almost 48 hours into the fighting … the situation in Israel is a dire one”.

He said fighting was continuing in southern Israel and that the IDF estimated upwards of 1,000 Hamas militants entered Israeli territory in Saturday’s unprecedented offensive. He said 700 Israelis had been killed – civilians and military personnel – and more than 2,100 wounded. With a “high number of critically wounded people”, more deaths are expected, he said. It was not clear how many of the bodies from the festival were already included in Israel’s overall toll.

The Palestinian health ministry said 413 Palestinians, including 78 children, have been killed and 2,300 people wounded since Saturday. Nineteen members of one family were reportedly killed when an airstrike hit their home in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

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Conricus said: “It is by far the worst day in Israeli history. Never before have so many Israelis been killed by one single thing on one day.” Drawing a US analogy, he said the weekend’s attack, for Israel, “could be a 9/11 and a Pearl Harbor wrapped into one”.

Conricus said a significant number of Israeli civilians and military personnel had been taken hostage and moved into Gaza. He did not specify a figure, but said “many many Israelis [have been] forcefully taken from Israel”.

He said the IDF military response had two primary objectives in its response to the Hamas attack. “At the end of this war, Hamas will no longer have any military capabilities to threaten Israeli civilians … Hamas will not be able to govern the Gaza Strip.”

Survivors from the festival attack described the rocket and gun fire coming from several directions as the assault unfolded on Saturday morning.

Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes in Rafah, Gaza early on Monday. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Chen Mizrachi, a resident of Tel Aviv who was at the party, told Ynet: “It started at seven in the morning. When the rocket fire from the sky began, we started shouting ‘Code Red’ to everyone. There were several firing points; we ran from one direction to another. There were no IDF, only police. We needed more officers.

“Many fell and were injured from terrorist fire. The terrorists surrounded us. Somehow, we managed to escape the line of fire.”

Mizrachi said several of his friends were missing.

Arik Nani went to the party to celebrate his 26th birthday on Friday night but ended up fleeing a massacre. “I heard shots from every direction, they were firing at us from both sides,” he told Reuters. “Everyone was running and didn’t know what to do. It was total chaos.”

After hours of running, Nani and his friend finally reached shelter where he heard horrifying stories from others who had escaped. “People speaking about murder they saw in front of their eyes, someone who saw an entire kidnapped family and a small girl who was murdered,” he said.

The grim discovery of the bodies came as the Israeli military laboured to crush fighters still in southern towns and intensified its bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The toll passed 1,100 dead and thousands wounded on both sides.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war on Hamas on Sunday, raising the prospect of a ground assault on Gaza, a move that in the past has brought intensified casualties.

Meanwhile, Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group claimed to have taken captive more than 130 people from inside Israel and brought them into Gaza, saying they would be traded for the release of thousands of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. The announcement, though unconfirmed, was the first sign of the scope of the abductions.

The captives are known to include soldiers and civilians, including women, children and older adults – mostly Israelis but also some people of other nationalities. The Israeli military said only that the number of captives was “significant”.

In response, Israel hit more than 800 targets in Gaza over the weekend, its military said, including airstrikes that levelled much of the town of Beit Hanoun in the enclave’s north-east corner.

Israeli Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters Hamas was using the town as a staging ground for attacks. There was no immediate word on casualties, and most of the community’s population of tens of thousands likely fled beforehand. “We will continue to attack in this way, with this force, continuously, on all gathering [places] and routes” used by Hamas, Hagari said.

Civilians on both sides were already paying a high price.

Mayyan Zin said she learned that her two daughters had been abducted when a relative sent her photos from a Telegram group showing them sitting on mattresses in captivity. She then found online videos of a chilling scene in her ex-husband’s home in the town of Nahal Oz: gunmen who had broken in speak to him, his leg bleeding, in the living room near the two terrified, weeping daughters, Dafna, 15, and Ella, 8. Another video showed the father being taken across the border into Gaza. “Just bring my daughters home and to their family. All the people,” Zin said.

The presence of hostages in Gaza complicates Israel’s response. Israel has a history of making heavily lopsided exchanges to bring captive Israelis home.

An Egyptian official said Israel sought help from Cairo to ensure the safety of the hostages. Egypt also spoke to both sides about a potential ceasefire, but Israel was not open to a truce “at this stage”, according to the official, who asked not to be identified.

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In Gaza, a tiny enclave of 2.3 million people sealed off by an Israeli-Egyptian blockade for 16 years since the Hamas takeover, residents feared further escalation. Israeli strikes flattened some residential buildings.

Nasser Abu Quta said 19 members of his family including his wife were killed when an airstrike hit their home, where they were huddling on the ground floor in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

There were no militants in his building, he insisted. “This is a safe house, with children and women,” the 57-year-old said by telephone. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the strike. Another strike in the same city early on Monday killed 11, including women and children.

The number of displaced Gaza residents staying at schools converted into shelters jumped by tens of thousands, to 123,000, the United Nations said. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said a school sheltering more than 225 people took a direct hit. It did not say where the fire came from.

In a UN security council emergency meeting held behind closed doors on Sunday, the US demanded all 15 members strongly condemn “these heinous terrorist attacks committed by Hamas”, but they took no immediate action.

US deputy ambassador Robert Wood said afterward that “a good number of countries” did condemn the Hamas attack.

Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told the Associated Press the Americans tried to say during the meeting that Russia isn’t condemning the attacks, but “that’s untrue”. “It was in my comments,” he said. “We condemn all the attacks on civilians.”