He and his girlfriend, Elisa Levin, 34, drove four hours south on Friday night for the event celebrating the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.
But at 6.30am on Saturday, they were among thousands of young partygoers enjoying the sunrise, unaware that their lives were about to change forever. At first, the air raid sirens seemed like they were part of the music, survivors said.
Then rocket vapour trails began appearing in the sky above: people began panicking about being caught in the open, rushing to their cars. And then the gunfire began.
About 200 people are believed to have been killed at the all-night festival, and dozens more are still missing, believed to have been taken to the Gaza Strip as hostages. The attack was one of the worst single incidents during the Palestinian militant group Hamas's surprise offensive Operation al-Aqsa Flood - a day that will go down in history as Israel's 9/11.
Some attendees watched their friends die in front of them; others played dead for hours until they heard voices speaking in Hebrew and knew help had arrived. Videos from the scene showed lifeless bodies on the ground, a shot-up van, and men and women being dragged away by armed militants. Screams fill the air.
One harrowing clip showed an Israeli woman identified as Noa Argamani pleading for her life as she was separated from her partner and driven away on a motorbike by two Hamas fighters into Gaza.
Markachenko and Levin managed to escape the initial chaos, his brother Dima said: their car's GPS system shows the vehicle is still located about 3 miles from the party site. But no one has heard from them since around 6.15am, when Levin called her brother.
"We don't know anything. The Home Front, the police, the army, no one has any information to give us. We've been to every hospital in the country, nothing. And the road is blocked, so we can't go to their car," the 32-year-old said.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 09, 2023 من The Guardian.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 09, 2023 من The Guardian.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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