For four days Hannie Ricardo held out hope that her daughter Oriya was in hiding after Hamas terrorists descended upon a music festival in the Israel desert on Saturday morning, killing hundreds.
"That's what kept me going," Ricardo said Wednesday in a telephone interview.
"I sat with her boyfriend's mother and we planned their wedding," she said, describing how she passed the endless days since she learned her daughter was missing.
On Tuesday, Ricardo says Oriya's boyfriend drove to the site of the festival to search the area of her last cellphone ping.
He found her body there. She had attempted to escape with a friend but her friend was shot as they drove away. The last communication with her boyfriend was about her friend as he died in her arms. After that, she tried to flee on foot and was killed.
"They got her," Ricardo said. "They are monsters full of hate, ignorance and they are there for the killing," Ricardo said of Hamas.
Hope has given way to frustration and anger as families wait for the more than 260 massacred at the Supernova music festival to be identified and for their remains to be returned for burial.
For Diana Kupervaser, it took five excruciating days of silence from authorities before she learned her daughter Shani was among the dead.
“It’s like she vanished,” Kupervaser told NBC News on Monday before she'd learned the fate of her daughter, who had attended the music festival in the Negev desert near the Gaza border.
Without any information, Kupervaser held out hope that Shani might be alive in Gaza.
But on Wednesday, as she sheltered in place in the northern city of Haifa, amid sirens and threats of rocket attacks from Hamas and Hezbollah, she was notified that 27-year-old Shani had been killed.
"To see my mother banging her head when she got the horrible news," said Shani’s uncle Victor Volam, "it's a sight I will not forget for the rest of my life."
The family of Shira Eylon, 23, also learned Wednesday she had been identified among the dead. Her body was found in the woods surrounding the music festival.
Video reviewed by NBC News shows dozens of festival attendees seeking protection in shrubs and trees. Survivors have described being hunted by Hamas, staying silent and trying to camouflage themselves in hopes of remaining undetected.
Eylon last called her father around 7 a.m. saying she was terrified as bombs began to fall. She was too scared to drive, and decided to wait for 30 minutes hoping the situation would calm down.
Just before her phone was disconnected, Shira texted her dad saying she could hear gunfire.
“That was it. We lost connection with her,” her sister Adar Eylon said. “We couldn’t find her. The country was in complete chaos — no one would give us information.”
Shira's friends survived but lost track of her, and they later described the scene to her family.
“They told me it felt like the Holocaust — Jews running away from Nazis,” Eylon said through tears Wednesday.
She described her sister as being very special, independent and mature.
"I feel like everybody has a part in this world, and her part was to spread kindness," Eylon said, adding that she is considering moving out of Israel because she fears growing violence.
There are still an unknown number of festivalgoers missing, but families continue to hope for news that their loved ones might be among those still alive — even if that means they are being held hostage in Gaza.
“We hope he is somewhere hiding in the bushes,” one distraught uncle said of his nephew over the phone.
But as the days wear on, more and more people have gotten the news that their loved ones were killed.
"It’s like something is ripped out of your chest," Hannie Ricardo said.
"I have moments when I can’t breathe. It’s physical pain. Painful beyond belief."
