October 7 Hamas attacks: The day Israel stood still. How it all unfolded

An emotional day begun in Israel to mark the first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks. At dawn, hundreds gathered at the site of the Nova music festival in southern Israel to honor those killed that day, while thousands had attended a vigil in Tel Aviv at midnight. 

A year since that dreadful day, scorch marks and bullet pockmark the battered walls of burnt-down houses in many kibbutzs (settlements) that were overrun by Hamas militants last year. Many of these settlements are lie in wait for their occupants. The attack saw many families being wiped out entirely.

Many have roofs caved in, smashed windows, and shards of terracotta and glass littering the floors, as the debris lay untouched since that fateful day when Israel was celebrating the Jewish Sabbath and the last day of the religious holiday of Sukkot.  

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched the largest-ever terrorist attack on Israeli soil. The Palestinian organisation, considered a terrorist group by the US and the EU, stormed through the security fence separating Gaza and Israel and killed 1,189 people, children, toddlers, infants, and animals, including 815 civilians, while wounding 7,500 and taking 251 hostage. 

Hamas also unleashed a barrage of rockets and mortar shells on Israeli towns and military bases and called it “operation Al-Aqsa deluge”, a reference to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, considered Islam’s third holiest site. 

The onslaught saw hundreds of fighters from Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, breaching dozens of points along the 59-km barrier separating the Gaza Strip and Israel.   

They used drones armed with explosives to neutralise the Israeli watchtowers along the border along with Israeli military equipment and telecommunications infrastructure. 

Commandos on motorbikes and pick-up trucks quickly infiltrated Israeli territory, before bulldozers widened the gaps in the fence to allow larger vehicles to pass through. Hamas also used motorboats to reach Israel by sea and motorized paragliders to infiltrate by air.   

Several kibbutzim bordering the Gaza Strip were attacked. Thousands of people, mostly affiliated with the Israeli left, lived in these residential communities. The massacre lasted almost seven hours in Be’eri kibbutz with the attackers going from house-to-house for their victims. Its thousand or so inhabitants suffered the deadliest attack on a single community on October 7.   

The largest massacre of civilians took place at the Supernova music festival, near the Re’im kibbutz, where 3,000 people had gathered. The killings here account for more than half of the civilian casualties. Overall, 251 people were taken hostage during the October 7 attacks. 

Images and videos of the coordinated Hamas attack were rapidly made public. Videos of Palestinian commandos in the streets of Israel probably filmed by Israeli civilians were posted on social media. Some Gazans advanced beyond the border area into Israeli territory. Some were filmed looting after the deadly Hamas attack.  

In the hours following the attacks, Hamas broadcast several propaganda videos glorifying its fighters. Video clips of summary executions of civilians, hostage-taking, grenades thrown into houses, corpses brought back to the Gaza Strip also were released. 

A few months after the deadly Hamas attack, the UN confirmed that it had “found clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualised torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” had been committed against Israeli hostages. 

The report released by the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten said that the hostages subsequently taken to Gaza have also been raped. 

After the first few hours of shock, Israel started to act. After 9 am, Defence Minister Yoav Galant said, “Hamas made a grave mistake this morning: it started a war against the State of Israel.”  

At 11:34 am, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is his address said, “Citizens of Israel, we are at war, not in an operation or in rounds, but at war... We have been in this since the early morning hours.”  The prime minister said that Hamas would pay “an unprecedented price” adding, “We are at war and we will win.” 

From midday onwards, Israeli security forces were on their way to recapture 22 localities in the south of Israel hit by Hamas. In the late afternoon and evening, Hamas fired new rocket salvos at several cities, including Tel Aviv, Ashkelon and Sderot. Fighting continued in the Be’eri kibbutz, which was liberated 17 hours after being seized by Hamas. 

On October 10, the Israeli army declared that it had regained control of all the areas infiltrated by Hamas.