A view of houses in the Israeli village of Kfar Aza damaged in the violence that ensued following a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. (Credit: Alexandre Meneghini/REUTERS)
BEIRUT — A Haaretz investigation has revealed that an Israeli man who escaped the Nova music festival on Oct. 7 was shot and killed by a volunteer security squad in the southern Israeli village of Alumim. His girlfriend, who was with him, was also shot, but survived.
Haaretz conducted interviews with the victim's girlfriend, family members, village members and security personnel, analyzed footage and listened to recorded phone calls.
The sequence of events, as determined by the investigation, go as follows: Oftek Atun, 24, and his girlfriend Tamar fled the rave after rockets started flying overhead, escaping by car. First, they took refuge in a bomb shelter built for residents of Alumim, but the shelter came under attack and they fled again. This time they went into the village itself, unaware that it had been apparently cleared of Palestinian militants, and started frantically banging on people’s doors, hoping to find somewhere to hide.
Atun and Tamar burst into the home of an elderly couple who were taking shelter in their “safe room.” When the elderly couple heard the younger couple in their home, they thought it was Palestinian gunmen and called the village’s volunteer security squad for help.
The squad, including a village resident soldier, showed up, evacuated the elderly couple through the window in their safe room, and then entered the house in search of Hamas fighters.
What happened next isn’t clear. A member of the security squad says Atun and the soldier, who had a pistol, got into a fight, which ended with the soldier shooting Atun multiple times, still thinking, so Haaretz reports, that the 24-year-old party goer was a “terrorist.”
According to Atun’s girlfriend, he was shot dead without any prior struggle. Tamar herself was shot in the stomach as she fled from the house where her boyfriend had just been killed. She managed to survive the shooting.
Haaretz quotes a statement from the village, in which their testimony of events goes as such: “The community's volunteer security squad rescued the [elderly couple] from the window of the safe room and then entered the house, where they noticed the late Ofek charging towards them holding a knife in his hand, and unfortunately they shot him dead. Immediately after that, they searched the house and also shot Tamar when she tried to escape."
Haaretz says it will be releasing more details soon.
On Feb. 6, Reuters reported that Israel had begun investigating possible “breaches of the law” by its forces on Oct. 7 following a steadily developing discourse around the events of that chaotic and bloody day — how they are understood, and who is blamed for what.
According to Haaretz, the army’s investigation is centered around an incident in southern Israeli village of Be’eri, one of the worst-hit communities, in which a house was shelled by a tank, killing 12 Israeli hostages who were being held by Palestinian gunmen inside. Gaza has been under a strict Israeli blockade since 2007. Hamas does not have any tanks, aircraft, or warships. A report from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy confirms this.
Yasmine Porat, a survivor of the attack on Be'eri, claimed in an Oct. 15 interview on Israeli radio that the army had "without a doubt" killed several Israeli civilians while it fought Hamas on Oct. 7. “They killed everyone, including the hostages,” she said.
Another Haaretz report published in mid-November cited a police investigation that concluded an Israeli Apache helicopter that responded to the attack on Nova music festival fired at both the gunmen and the festival participants.
Around 1,200 Israelis and foreigners were killed on Oct. 7 — the worst loss of life in a single day since the State of Israel was created in 1948.