Two years after Hamas gunmen attacked the Nova festival in southern Israel, the desert site stands as both grave and shrine, where the living come to mourn the dead.

More than 370 revellers were massacred when Palestinian militants crossed from Gaza into Israel in the early hours of October 7, 2023, attacking the music festival and several nearby communities.

On Tuesday at dawn, dozens of relatives returned to the site, embracing one another and mourning the dead, an AFP correspondent reported.

Tears streamed down mourners' faces as they turned toward photographs of loved ones -- wedding portraits, holiday snapshots, dancing scenes and countless smiling selfies -- most of them young, with their years of birth and death inscribed beneath.

At 6:29 am (0329 GMT) -- the precise time when H

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