Video From The Road Outside The Israeli Music Festival Shows The Barbaric Carnage Inflicted By Hamas

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 huge surprise attack on Israel.

One partygoer, called 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.

People tried to flee the site, she said, running across the sand and getting into their cars to drive away - but partygoers said there were jeeps full of gunmen, shooting at the cars.

Up to 250 people may have been killed at the music festival near the Gaza border fence.

According to reports, many of the victims are Europeans and Americans.