Israeli music festival: 260 bodies recovered from site where people fled in hail of bullets

For weeks, excited music-lovers had looked forward to the Supernova festival, held in the desert in southern Israel to coincide with the Jewish festival of Sukkot.

"The time has come when the whole family is about to get together again," organisers wrote on social media before it began. "And what fun it is going to be!"

Just hours later, their social media pages are now flooded with desperate people trying to find loved ones, after Palestinian militants stormed the festival and opened fire as part of a huge surprise attack on Israel.

More than 260 bodies have reportedly been recovered from the festival site, according to rescue agency Zaka.

One partygoer, Ortel, said the first sign that something was wrong was when a siren went off at around dawn, warning of rockets. Eyewitnesses said the rockets were quickly followed by gunshots.

"They turned off the electricity and suddenly out of nowhere they [militants] come inside with gunfire, opening fire in every direction," she told Israel's Channel 12.

"Fifty terrorists arrived in vans, dressed in military uniforms," she said.

"They fired bursts, and we reached a point where everyone stopped their vehicles and started running. I went into a tree, a bush like this, and they just started spraying people. I saw masses of wounded people thrown around."

Gilad Karplus, who was working as a masseuse at the festival, told the BBC he also saw people being hit by bullets and managed to escape into the fields in a vehicle with his friends.

"Then they [the militants] started firing sniper rifles on us from different places and also heavy artillery."