Hero search teams find terrified survivors of Hamas massacre ALIVE – five days after festival bloodbath
SEARCH teams are still finding terrified survivors of Saturday’s Hamas massacre alive – five days after the bloodbath.
Those found included traumatised festival-goers attacked by terrorists aboard paragliders as more than 2,000 Hamas terrorists unleashed the horror attack.
Police said yesterday that some have been hiding out for days and nights in open desert, too scared to approach anyone.
A large family group of 30 survivors were found in hiding on Monday night in the kibbutz of Ein Hashlosha, only two miles from the Gaza border.
The group, consisting of 16 Israelis and 14 Thai nationals, found themselves cut off after phone contact died and were terrified of leaving their fortified panic rooms.
Police and Israeli Defence Force units continued to scour the area – which was still infested with pockets of Hamas fighters last night.
The Islamist group’s fighters killed more than 280 festival goers at the Nova peace festival music event alone, among 1,500 others already dead.
But the astonishing discovery of survivors presumed to have died in the carnage raised hopes that more may still be alive.
Police spokesman Master Sergeant Dean Elsdunne said: “We are still finding survivors in the desert hiding under bushes and scrub too terrified to show themselves.
“They don’t know if people approaching them on Israeli army or Hamas and have been hiding in open desert.
“Others may still be in safe rooms or buildings without phone contact who don’t know it’s safe to come out and we are doing everything humanly possible to find them.
Thousands of relatives flocked to a Family Support Centre close to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport yesterday to meet police teams leading the hunt.
Sophisticated new technology is being used to match relatives’ DNA to be quickly compared to the DNA of dead and wounded in hospitals and morgues.
And a database built since Saturday’s attacks is now allowing searches to focus on areas where attack victims may still be alive and in hiding.
Master Sergeant Elsdunne continued: “Families who come here are providing DNA samples for us to check against the wounded and those who have been sadly killed and this enabling us to focus on people who may still be alive – and where they might be.
“These are very dark times but finding 30 people alive and relatively unscathed on Monday night and more as recently as yesterday give us a little light of hope.
“Every person we are meeting now is a victim a the worst inhumanity imaginable so we are also providing emotional and psychological support.
“It is hard for many of them to comprehend how anyone could have done such terrible things to them and their loved ones.”
Police Chief Superintendent Tzahi Ben Hamo said he is still scarred by the ordeal of having to recover mutilated bodies from massacre sites.
He said: “This was an atrocity ten times worse than 9/11 – even more than that – and things were done to victims that are unspeakable.
“Men women and children fell victim to the most extreme acts and we are now doing all we can to comfort and help their loved ones.
“And if anyone is still alive out there we will do everything possible to reach them as quickly as we can.”
Hamo added: “We are using all the technology at our disposal, DNA and other methods to find a person and identify them.”
Hamo said they could also discover if those missing are alive and need to be rescued.
He said it’s very likely that there are more people out there alive and in hiding after the horror attacks.
Hamo said: “We can even discover if they are alive and need to be rescued. We are having to do this sensitively as you cannot possibly imagine some of the sights these victims have suffered.
“They saw horrors, acts against humanity and they need psychological help to get through this traumatic experience.
“If anyone is still out there and needs rescuing we will get to them. We will win this.”