The body of Bar Asraf, 30, was discovered Saturday evening at a cemetery in Elkana, in the West Bank, where his girlfriend, Liron Barda, is buried. Barda, 26, had worked as a bar manager at the Nova festival near Re’im and was reportedly helping injured festival-goers when she was killed during the October 7, 2023 massacre, in which Hamas gunmen killed roughly 1,200 people and took hundreds hostage.
According to accounts relayed by Asraf’s family, he had gone to spend time alone, as he often did, on the day he died. His sister, Lihi, described to Israeli outlet Walla that the family had been together earlier that day at a joyful family wedding. She recalled that nothing seemed unusual in his mood beforehand, saying he had seemed his usual cheerful self. When he didn’t return after a few hours, family members grew concerned and eventually went looking for him, first checking familiar places before searching Barda’s grave, where they found him.
Friends and family said Asraf carried the weight of losing Barda every day in the years since the attack, including getting a tattoo in her memory and continuing to visit her family regularly. Those close to him said he struggled visibly with grief, even as he tried to maintain a normal life.
Shiran Maor, chairman of SafeHeart, an organization that provides mental health support to Nova survivors and their families, offered condolences following Asraf’s death, noting that trauma from the attack has continued to ripple outward to partners, parents, and friends of victims – not only direct survivors, years after the massacre itself.
Asraf’s death adds to a painful pattern among those connected to the Nova festival attack. Earlier this year, fellow survivor Roei Shalev, who was shot while trying to shield his girlfriend, Mapal Adam, before she was killed, died by suicide just after the two-year anniversary of the massacre. Shalev’s own mother had taken her life a week after the original attack. In the days surrounding Shalev’s death, Yelena Giler, the mother of another Nova victim, also died by suicide.
Mental health advocates working with the Nova survivor community have repeatedly urged continued public attention to the long-term psychological toll of the attack, saying the trauma experienced by survivors, families, and loved ones remains acute years later and requires sustained support.