A Briton and his girlfriend missing in Israel following attacks by Hamas are feared to have been killed.
Photographer Danny Darlington was unaccounted for since he went into hiding in a bunker in Nir Oron, a kibbutz in the south of the county close to the border with Gaza on Saturday.
The kibbutz was one of the first communities targeted when Hamas militants inflitrated the border and attacked early on Saturday morning. One resident said: “We are being slaughtered. There is no army. People are begging for their lives.”
Others described how people were loaded onto the back of a truck flanked by Hamas fighters and taken into Gaza.
Mr Darlington, who lived in Berlin, had been travelling with German partner Carolin Bohl. The couple — seen happily posing for snap on Instagram shortly before they vanished — chronicled their adventures on social media.
Ms Bohl’s heartbroken sister Anja Pasquesi said on Sunday night the family had now received news of their deaths from a friend “on the ground” in Israel.
She wrote: “Today we learned that she and her friend Danny were killed in a terrorist attack yesterday. We are broken and are working to cope with this unimaginable tragedy.”
Ms Bohl’s brother-in-law Sam Pasquesi wrote on Instagram: “While we haven’t got official notification from the governments of Israel, Germany or UK, we have reliable information from the ground in Israel that our beloved Caro and her dear friend Danny were killed in a terrorist Hamas raid.”
Mr Darlington’s father David said the photographer’s half-sister had last spoken to him on the morning of his disappearance. He told the BBC: “The communications network is down and we haven’t spoken to him.”
Among the Britons confirmed dead was 20-year-old Nathanel Young, a former pupil at the Jewish Free School in north London. He was serving in the Israeli Defence Services and died on the Gaza border on Saturday. Fears are growing for Jake Marlowe, 26, who also attended the Jewish Free School. He was working at the Supernova Festival, near the Gaza Strip, when militants stormed the site firing rockets.
More than 260 festival-goers were massacred in the worst loss of life of the attack. Witnesses said the terrorists “appeared out of nowhere” and opened fire on the festival-goers, going “tree by tree” executing victims.
Mr Marlowe moved to Israel in 2021 and was living in Ma’alot, where he was also employed as a carpenter.
His parents, Lisa and Michael, from Potters Bar, launched an appeal for information. Mrs Marlowe said: “He called me at 4.30am to say all these rockets were flying over. Then, at about 5.30am, he texted to say ‘Signal very bad, everything OK, will keep you updated, I promise you’.” An Israeli embassy spokesman said: ‘We don’t know for sure that he is taken hostage or dead or in a hospital.”
The Foreign Office said it was “in contact with — and assisting — the families of several individuals”.
Another festival-goer named as 25-year-old Noa Argamani was filmed screaming for help as she was snatched by gunmen on a motorbike. Footage shows her screaming, “Don’t kill me! No, no, no,” as the men sped away with her towards Gaza before pictures appeared of her drinking water in custody.
The fate of her boyfriend Avi Nathan, seen being manhandled with an arm pinned behind his back, is unknown.
Fears are also growing for an Irish dual citizen who has not been seen since the desert rave. Kim Damti, 22, was originally on a list of those who had reached a safe haven but she was not on the buses that evacuated those at the rave.
A woman whose lifeless and semi-naked body was pictured in a social media video has been named as German tattoo artist, Shani Louk, 30, who was seized by Hamas terrorists at the festival.
Young children and elderly grandparents are among more than 100 hostages abducted in Israel and being held as human shields in Gaza by Hamas.
The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested an elderly Holocaust survivor was among those taken hostage.
