 "How Hamas carried out its deadliest attack on Israel on October 7 last year")
Today, October 7, marks the first anniversary of Palestinian militant group Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel. From geopolitics to relations between nations in West Asia, everything has changed from that day.
According to an AFP tally, the October 7 attack claimed the lives of 1,205 Israelis, mostly civilians, while thousands of others were injured. The toll includes the number of hostages who were killed or died in captivity in the Gaza Strip.
The families of those killed at the Nova music festival along with Israeli President Isaac Herzog gathered this year at 6:30 am (the exact hour Hamas launched its attack) at the site where almost 400 revellers were gunned down and from where many others were taken hostage.
With the high amount of panic and confusion amid the attacks, the details of what had happened on that day could not be established. One year later, it has become clearer.
Here is a blow-to-blow account of the deadliest attack on the Jewish nation.
Hamas launched a surprise attack
At dawn on October 7, Hamas launched about 5,000 missiles. While Israel’s defence system, the Iron Dome, blocked some of the missiles it was quickly overwhelmed by the sheer number of them. At the same time, Hamas fighters — the group would later say they numbered 1,200 — stormed across the border on motorbikes, in pickup trucks and even in motorised paragliders.
They used explosives and bulldozers to break through the fence separating Gaza from Israel and attacked nearly 50 different sites, including kibbutzim communities, army bases and a music festival. Militants killed festival-goers en masse and went door-to-door in farming communities, shooting residents dead in their homes.
In March, a United Nations report acknowledged there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that rapes were committed during the attack. It also found “clear and convincing information” that some hostages taken on that day had been raped.
Israeli Army’s slow response
The Hamas militants had stormed across the border into the inner regions of the Jewish nation including six military bases, kibbutz communities and a music festival by 8:30 am. These include Erez at the northern end of the Gaza Strip, Nahal Oz opposite Gaza City, two others near the Beeri kibbutz, one in Reim near central Gaza and two in the south close to the Egyptian border.
Residents of kibbutzim near Gaza were forced to fight the attackers on their own for hours, as the military was slow to come to their aid. They would later describe cowering in safe rooms as militants tried to break down the doors, or taking whatever arms they had and rushing out to try to repel the assault.
At the Nova music festival, where nearly 3,000 people had gathered in fields and woods a few kilometres (miles) from central Gaza, militants went on an hour-long rampage that killed at least 370 people. In kibbutz Beeri, one of the worst-hit communities, the first individual Israeli reinforcements came to help “from 13:30 onwards”, an army report later said.
A full army division arrived at 4:15 pm to organise a coordinated evacuation of survivors and retake control of the kibbutz. The military announced at around 6:00 pm that both soldiers and civilians had been seized by Hamas attackers and taken into Gaza.
Hundreds taken hostage
A total of 251 people in Israel were taken hostage on October 7, including 44 from the Nova festival and at least 74 from kibbutz Nir Oz. Some, including soldiers, were already dead and their bodies were taken into Gaza, the army has said.
Some hostages may have fallen to friendly fire, including in kibbutz Beeri, where witnesses told Israeli media a tank fired at a house in which 14 people were being held by Hamas.
The order may have been an instance of the “Hannibal Directive”, which Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported was applied at least three times that day. This measure allows for the use of force to prevent soldiers from being captured.
Netanyahu declares its ‘war’
At 11:34 am, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an almost unprecedented televised address to the rest of the and declared, “We are at war.” In the afternoon, the military called up 360,000 reservists to bolster an army that otherwise boasts 170,000 personnel, a mix of those performing mandatory service and career soldiers.
Israel quickly began a relentless bombardment of Gaza, the tiny Palestinian coastal territory home to 2.4 million people that has been ruled by Hamas since 2007. An AFP journalist reported the first strike in Gaza at 10:39 am that day. Since then, the territory has been devastated by relentless air strikes.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive since October 7 has killed at least 41,788 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN has called the figures reliable.
As night fell on October 7, the search continued for any gunmen still inside Israel, with terrified civilians locked inside their homes and many streets deserted. On October 10, the military said it had taken back control of all territory attacked by the militants.
With inputs from AFP
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