Israeli who fled 7 October attack commits suicide on her birthday

An Israeli who had escaped the Hamas cross-border attack on 7 October 2023 has committed suicide, Israeli media outlets reported on Sunday quoting family members.

According to reports, Shirel Golan was at the Nova music festival on 7 October when Palestinian resistance fighters launched their unprecedented cross border infiltration of Israeli sites in the Gaza envelope.

Golan escaped the attack but on her twenty-second birthday on Sunday evening, she was found dead  in the garden of her home in central Israel.

Her family claimed Shirel suffered from PTSD following the attack and was hospitalised twice since.

The family accused the Israeli government of failing to provide her with mental health services.

“She said she received no assistance from the state. She said that she only had assistance from the [Tribe of] Nova foundation,” her brother, Eyal, told Israel Hayom.

“The State of Israel murdered my sister twice. Once in October, mentally, and a second time today, on her 22nd birthday, physically,” Eyal told Israel’s Channel 12 News.

An Israeli police investigation into 7 October revealed that an Israeli attack helicopter killed some of the attendees of the Nova festival, Haaretz reported on 18 November 2023.

According to a police source, an investigation into the incident showed that an Israeli combat helicopter that arrived at the scene from the Ramat David base fired at Palestinian resistance fighters and other Palestinians who crossed through the border fence from Gaza into Israel, but also fired on some of the Israelis attending the music festival. According to the police, 364 people were killed there.

Previous reports in Israeli media revealed that Israeli forces killed Israeli civilians in Be’eri, a settlement also near the Gaza border.

READ: Gaza: Israeli captive dies under ‘mysterious circumstances’