Message after message, the brief WhatsApps tell a poignant and chilling story of encroaching terror with people making increasingly desperate pleas for help, some of them with only minutes to live, AFP reports.

“People documented their last moments, they sent selfies before they were murdered,” said Yaniv Hegyi, a former secretary-general of kibbutz Beeri.

Now Hegyi is leading a project called “Memorial 710”, collating the WhatsApp messages, images and video sent that day to create a second-by-second archive of the bloody attack as gunmen overran the rural community.

For the terrified residents hiding in their safe rooms in the dark, their mobiles were their only source of information and communication.

“Where’s the army? They’re breaking into our home!” read one message Hegyi showed AFP. “There’s shouting in Arabic… there’s a lot of shooting,” said another. “Please come, it’s urgent. They’re shooting at the door.”

In one instance, Hegyi — who was in dozens of WhatsApp groups as a result of his position, and received thousands of messages that day — wrote back: “Stay inside, don’t go out. Everyone who goes outside the house gets killed.”

Read more here