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How the Hamas Attack on Israel Unfolded

A car destroyed in an attack by Palestinian militants is seen in Sderot, Israel, on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP)
A car destroyed in an attack by Palestinian militants is seen in Sderot, Israel, on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP)
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How the Hamas Attack on Israel Unfolded

A car destroyed in an attack by Palestinian militants is seen in Sderot, Israel, on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP)
A car destroyed in an attack by Palestinian militants is seen in Sderot, Israel, on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP)

A surprise attack by Hamas on Israel, which combined gunmen breaching security barriers with a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza, was launched at dawn on Saturday during the Jewish high holiday of Simchat Torah.

The attack came 50 years and a day after Egyptian and Syrian forces launched an assault during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur in an effort to retrieve territory Israel had taken during a brief conflict in 1967.

This is how it took place:

COVERING ROCKET BARRAGE

At about 6.30 a.m. (0430 GMT) Hamas fired a huge barrage of rockets across southern Israel, with sirens heard as far away as Tel Aviv and Beersheba.

Hamas said it had fired 5,000 rockets in a first barrage. Israel's military said 2,500 rockets were fired.

Smoke billowed over residential Israeli areas and people sheltered behind buildings as sirens sounded overhead. At least one woman was reported killed by the rockets.

DAWN INFILTRATION

The barrage served as cover for an unprecedented multi-pronged infiltration of fighters, with the Israeli military saying at 7.40 a.m. (0540 GMT) that Palestinian gunmen had crossed into Israel.

Most fighters crossed through breaches in land security barriers separating Gaza and Israel. But at least one was filmed crossing on a powered parachute while a motorboat was filmed heading to Zikim, an Israeli coastal town and military base.

Videos issued by Hamas showed fighters breaching the security fences, with the dim light and low sun suggesting it was at around the time of the rocket barrage.

One video showed at least six motorbikes with fighters crossing through a hole in a metal security barrier.

A photograph released by Hamas showed a bulldozer tearing down a section of security fence.

FIGHTING AT ISRAELI MILITARY BASES

Israel's military said at 10 a.m. that Palestinian fighters had penetrated at least three military installations around the frontier - the Erez border crossing, the Zikim base and the Gaza division headquarters at Reim. It said fighting at Erez and Zikim continued.

Hamas videos showed fighters running towards a burning building near a high concrete wall with a watchtower and fighters apparently overrunning part of an Israeli military facility and shooting from behind a wall.

Several captured Israeli military vehicles were later pictured being driven into Gaza and paraded there.

BORDER TOWN RAIDS

Fighters raided the Israeli border town of Sderot and were reported to be in another border community, Be'eri, and the town of Ofakim 30km (20 miles) east of Gaza, according to Israeli media citing phone calls from residents.

A video verified by Reuters showed several gunmen riding the back of a white pickup truck moving through Sderot.

Many residents of southern Israeli towns have fortified areas in their homes that function as bomb shelters and on Saturday they were using them as panic rooms.

Israel's military ordered residents to shelter inside, saying on the radio "we will reach you".

By mid-morning Israel's police chief Yaacov Shabtai said forces were engaging gunmen in 21 locations and at 1.30 p.m. the military said troops were still working to clear communities that had been overrun by gunmen.

CASUALTIES

A Reuters photographer saw bodies on the streets of Sderot. Israeli news media have reported at least 100 Israelis killed and 800 wounded.

Hamas videos and unverified images circulating on social media showed dead civilians, Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters.

Israel's Foreign Ministry said Hamas gunmen had gone house-to-house killing civilians.

TAKING CAPTIVES

Israeli media has reported that gunmen have seized hostages in Ofakim. Islamic Jihad said it was holding several Israeli soldiers captive and Hamas social media accounts showed footage of appearing to show captives being taken alive into Gaza.

One video showed three young men in vests, shorts and slippers being marched through a security installation with Hebrew writing on the wall. Other videos showed female captives.

Another showed fighters dragging at least two Israeli soldiers from a military vehicle.

ISRAELI STRIKES

At 9.45 a.m. blasts were heard in central Gaza and Gaza city and at 10.00 a.m. Israel's military spokesperson said the airforce was carrying out strikes in Gaza. Medics in Gaza said dozens of people were killed in the strikes.

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Hamas Weakened, Not Crushed a Year into War with Israel

People search for survivors and the bodies of victims through the rubble of buildings destroyed during Israeli bombardment, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 26, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
People search for survivors and the bodies of victims through the rubble of buildings destroyed during Israeli bombardment, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 26, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
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Hamas Weakened, Not Crushed a Year into War with Israel

People search for survivors and the bodies of victims through the rubble of buildings destroyed during Israeli bombardment, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 26, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
People search for survivors and the bodies of victims through the rubble of buildings destroyed during Israeli bombardment, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 26, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)

Israel's military campaign to eradicate Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attack has weakened it by killing several of its leaders and thousands of fighters, and by reducing swaths of the territory it rules to rubble.

But the Palestinian armed group has not been crushed outright, and a year on from its unprecedented attack on Israel, an end to its hold over Gaza remains elusive.

Hamas sparked the Gaza war by sending hundreds of fighters across the border into Israel on October 7, 2023, to attack communities in the south.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which include hostages killed in captivity.

Vowing to crush Hamas and bring the hostages home, Israel launched a military campaign in the Gaza Strip from the land, sea and air.

According to data provided by the health ministry of Hamas-run Gaza, the war has killed more than 41,000 people, the majority civilians. The United Nations has acknowledged these figures to be reliable.

- Dead leader -

In one of the biggest blows to the movement since it was founded in 1987 during the Palestinian intifada uprising, Hamas's leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran on July 31.

Both Hamas and its backer Iran accused Israel of killing Haniyeh, though Israel has not commented.

After Haniyeh's death, Hamas named Yahya Sinwar, whom Israel accuses of masterminding the October 7 attack, as its new leader.

On the Gaza battlefield, Israeli forces have aggressively pursued both Sinwar and Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, whom Israel says it killed in an air strike.

Hamas says Deif is still alive.

"Commander Mohammed Deif is still giving orders," a source in Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, told AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to media on the matter.

- 'Number one target' -

A senior Hamas official who also asked not to be named described Sinwar, who has not been seen in public since the start of the war, as a "supreme commander" who leads "both the military and political wings" of Hamas.

"A team is dedicated to his security because he is the enemy's number one target," the official said.

In August, Israeli officials reported the dead in Gaza included more than 17,000 Palestinian fighters.

A senior Hamas official acknowledged that "several thousand fighters from the movement and other resistance groups died in combat".

Despite its huge losses, the source in the group's armed wing still gloated over the intelligence and security failure that the October 7 attack was for Israel.

"It claims to know everything but on October 7 the enemy saw nothing," he said.

Israel has its own reading of where Hamas now stands.

In September, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Hamas "as a military formation no longer exists".

Bruce Hoffman, a researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Israel's offensive has dealt a "grievous but not a crushing blow" to Hamas.

- 'Political suicide' -

Hamas has controlled Gaza and run its institutions single-handedly since 2007, after winning a legislative election a year earlier and defeating its Palestinian rivals Fatah in street battles.

Now, most of Gaza's institutions have either been damaged or destroyed.

Israel accuses Hamas of using schools, health facilities and other civilian infrastructure to conduct operations, a claim Hamas denies.

The war has left no part of Gaza safe from bombardment: schools turned into shelters for the displaced have been hit, as have healthcare facilities.

Hundreds of thousands of children have not gone to school in nearly a year, while universities, power plants, water pumping stations and police stations are no longer operational.

By mid-2024, Gaza's economy had been reduced to a "less than one-sixth of its 2022 level," according to a UN report that said it would take "decades to bring Gaza back" to its pre-October 7 state.

The collapse has fueled widespread discontent among Gaza's 2.4 million people, two-thirds of whom were already poor before the war, according to Mukhaimer Abu Saada, a political researcher at Al-Azhar University in Cairo.

"The criticism is harsh," he told AFP.

His colleague Jamal al-Fadi branded the October 7 attack as "political suicide for Hamas", which has now "found itself isolated".

Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim dismissed the assessment.

"While some may not agree with Hamas's political views, the resistance and its project continue to enjoy widespread support," said Naim, who like several other self-exiled Hamas leaders lives in Qatar.