Look inside the roadside bomb shelters on Israels Death Road that have been transformed into memorials for October 7s victims

Three years after Hamas’s Oct.7 massacre, a long stretch of highway in southern Israel remains a haunting open-air memorial, marking where festivalgoers’ desperate attempts to escape ended in slaughter.The highway, Route 232, was the only way out of the Nova music festival — but for hundreds fleeing the attack, it became a road to tragedy as its roadside bomb shelters turned into death traps and surrounding fields into killing grounds.As rockets flew overhead, terrified revelers streamed onto Route 232, where concrete bomb shelters built to protect civilians from rocket attacks are as ubiquitous as bus stops.Some crammed inside, believing they had found refuge.

Others abandoned their cars and scattered across the countryside, desperately searching for cover.Hamas gunmen hunted them down, firing into the shelters, hurling grenades through their narrow entrances, and then pursuing and ambushing those who fled on foot and by car.Today, the highway is referred to by locals who spoke to The Post as “Death Road” — a sprawling, miles-long memorial where one bullet-riddled shelter gives way to another, their walls covered with smiling portraits of the dead, flowers and handwritten tributes.Beyond the asphalt, makeshift shrines dot the fields where people were gunned down trying to escape. At the nearby Nova festival grounds, photographs stand where thousands once gathered to dance, while faded “Bring Them Home” posters still hang from residential gates.Together, the memorials trace the extraordinary reach of the massacre, marking the places where people were murdered across miles of roads and farmland.Nearly 300 people were killed along a 33-mile stretch of Route 232 and connecting roads, including festivalgoers, motorists, cyclists, farmworkers and police officers, according to the October 7 Parliamentary Commission Report.Among those who escaped was Israeli-American Gilad Karplus, 34, who was shot in the head while fleeing through the fields.“People sc...