Hundreds gathered at the site of the Supernova festival massacre at dawn on Monday to remember the 364 killed and 40 taken hostage there exactly a year ago.

It was an achingly sad ceremony as the sun rose across the Western Negev as the silence was punctuated by the cries of distraught relatives and powerful intermittent artillery fire into nearby Gaza.

“What are these bombs? Where were you on Oct 7?,” said Mosses Journo, whose 24-year-old niece Karin was among those murdered by Hamas gunmen at the festival in southern Israel. 

The wounds of that terrible day have hardly started to heal.

The desert site retained its mystic air ahead of dawn – the same spell that drew so many young people to it in the late summer of 2023.