Karin Vernikov, a 22-year-old from Rishon LeZion who hoped to become an event producer, and Sapir Bilmes, a 24-year-old bank worker and Maccabi Tel Aviv supporter from the same city, were shot dead by a Palestinian militant from Hamas at the gate of Kibbutz Alumim on the morning of 7 October 2023.
The two friends had fled the Nova music festival near Re’im and believed they had reached relative safety. Security cameras timed the killings at about 7:10am.
Also read: Tinubu declares three-day national mourning for NAF crash victims
Vernikov and Bilmes had met on a post-army trip through South America and become inseparable.
They travelled to the festival with another friend, Amit David, who was also murdered that day. Before leaving home, Vernikov told her mother, Luba, that the party would be her last.
When rocket fire began, the group left by car and messaged relatives that they were lying beside the vehicle near Alumim, taking cover. That was the final contact.
Footage released in November 2023, and later matched by Reuters to the road layout and buildings at Alumim, shows three armed men arriving from inside the kibbutz. Partygoers scatter.
One gunman closes on the two women. He seizes the first and shoots her at close range.
The second drops to the ground with her hands towards her head and remains there for roughly twenty seconds while he fires towards others. He then shoots her as well.
The recording has no sound. Families were told the deaths were swift. Bilmes’s body was identified days later, and she was buried in Rishon LeZion on 11 October.
The Palestinian militant killing two young girls was one episode in the wider assault that Hamas called the Al-Aqsa Flood. About 1,200 people were killed in Israel that day, most of them civilians, and roughly 250 were taken hostage.
About 360 of the dead were at the Nova festival. Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza has, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, a toll Israel disputes in its civilian-combatant breakdown and says includes fighters embedded among the population.
Also read: Tinubu declares three-day national mourning for NAF crash victims
Grief in the two households has settled into small, repeated acts of memory. Vernikov’s sister, Maria, said friends and relatives still bake the chocolate cake Vernikov took to every gathering. “The cake connects us to her”. Her mother, Ina, said: “No one in the world can give me back her warm hug”. Ina added: “The world lost our Sapir”
Mariam Balogun is a contributor to Freelanews.com, covering news, business, and public affairs.
