Jerusalem and Gaza CNN –
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country is “on a long and difficult war” as it grapples with an unprecedented hostage crisis after Palestinian militants launched a surprise land, sea and air attack from Gaza, killing hundreds killed and invaded Israeli territory.
Hamas’s shock attacks on Saturday led to Israel’s deadliest day in decades and followed months of increasing violence between Palestinians and Israelis, with the decades-long conflict now pushing into uncharted and dangerous new territory. It also raises the question of how Israel’s entire military and intelligence apparatus appears to have been caught off guard by one of the country’s worst security failures.
Israel’s Political Security Cabinet met late Saturday and made a “series of operational decisions aimed at destroying the military and state capabilities of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in a way that undermines their ability and desire to defeat Hamas.” “We will be citizens of Israel for many years to come,” said a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.
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Fire and smoke rise above buildings during an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on October 8, 2023.
Netanyahu vowed “mighty revenge” on the Palestinian militant group Hamas after its unprecedented attack on Israel.
From Saturday to Sunday, Hamas fired thousands of rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel, directly hitting several locations in the country, including Tel Aviv, while armed terrorist groups entered Israel and infiltrated military bases, towns and farms, shooting at civilians and taking hostages.
At least 350 Israelis were killed, an Israeli official told CNN, and more than 1,500 were injured, Israeli media reported.
Israel responded with airstrikes on what it attacked It said they were targeting Hamas targets in Gaza, while its forces clashed with Hamas militants on the ground in villages, army bases and border crossings.
Israeli warplanes continued bombing Gaza on Sunday morning. According to the Israel Defense Forces, 426 targets were hit in Gaza, including ten towers used by Hamas.
At least 313 Palestinians have died and nearly 1,990 have been injured in Gaza in the past 24 hours, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The toll included 20 dead and 121 injured children, the ministry added.
The Israeli leader said the “first phase” of the operation had ended with the “annihilation of the majority of enemy forces that had entered our territory.”
Netanyahu announced that Israeli forces had begun an “offensive formation” that would “continue without reservation and without pause until the objectives are achieved.” The Cabinet’s decisions include halting the supply of electricity, fuel and goods to Gaza.
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Police officers evacuate a woman and child from a site hit by a rocket in Ashkelon, Israel, on Saturday, October 7.
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Palestinians inspect damaged buildings in Gaza after Israeli airstrikes on Saturday.
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Palestinians gather around an Israeli army vehicle that Palestinian militants drove from Israel to Gaza on Saturday.
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Palestinians broke into the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border on Saturday after gunmen infiltrated parts of southern Israel.
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Children are seen in a damaged house in Gaza after Israeli airstrikes on Saturday.
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Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepts rockets fired from Gaza on Saturday.
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Members of the Israel Defense Forces take cover in Ashkelon as sirens blare and rockets are fired from Gaza into Israel on Saturday.
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Israeli airstrikes cause smoke to rise over Gaza on Saturday.
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An Israeli woman reacts to the body of her relative who was killed in the southern Israeli city of Sderot on Saturday.
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Vehicles burn in Ashkelon as rockets are fired from Gaza on Saturday.
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Israelis donate blood in Jerusalem on Saturday.
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A man in Ashkelon runs after rockets were fired from Gaza on Saturday.
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Outside a Gaza hospital, men sit next to the covered body of a Palestinian militant killed in Saturday’s clashes.
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Relatives of the Palestinians killed on Saturday mourn in the morgue of a hospital in Gaza.
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An Israeli soldier stands next to the bodies of Israelis killed by Palestinian militants in Sderot on Saturday.
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A woman stands in a room damaged by rockets in Ashkelon on Saturday.
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A building in Tel Aviv burns on Saturday after rocket attacks from Gaza.
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Smoke rises as clashes between Palestinian groups and Israeli forces continue on the streets of Beit Hanun in Gaza on Saturday.
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People take shelter in a bomb shelter in Rishon Lezion, Israel, as rockets are fired from Gaza on Saturday.
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Rockets will be fired at Israel from Gaza on Saturday.
Making matters worse, a “significant number” of Israeli nationals have been taken hostage by Hamas and are being held in locations across the Gaza Strip.
“Israel wakes up this morning to a terrible morning. Many people are killed. People have been kidnapped into Gaza, not just soldiers, but also civilians, children and grandmothers,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said on Sunday.
“We lost soldiers, we lost commanders, we lost a lot of civilians,” he added, without giving an exact number.
It has been more than 17 years since an Israeli soldier was taken prisoner of war during an attack on Israeli territory. And Israel has not experienced such infiltration of military bases, cities and kibbutzim since the urban development battles in the War of Independence in 1948.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas said the captured Israeli hostages were being held across the Gaza Strip and warned of attacks in the area.
“Threatening Gaza and its people is a losing game and a broken record,” Abu Obaeda spokesman for the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, said in a recorded audio message late Saturday. “What happens to the people of Gaza will happen to them, and beware of misjudgment.”
The group previously claimed to have captured “dozens” of Israelis, including soldiers, and was holding them in “safe locations and resistance tunnels.”
On Sunday, Hecht said the IDF had neutralized most of the significant fighting that took place in the settlement of Otef, but operations were still underway in numerous other parts of the country. The IDF’s goal for the next 12 hours is to “end the Gaza enclave … and kill all terrorists in our territory,” he said.
“We will probably try to displace certain communities in areas of the Gaza Strip,” he added.
The IDF is now slowly evacuating communities in Gaza and searching the area for remaining Hamas fighters. It also tries to control violations in the fence between Gaza and Israel.
“We will take tough action against Hamas. It will take some time,” said Hecht.
Asked by a journalist about the intelligence failure that allowed such a large-scale attack, Hecht said: “That’s not a question now… I’m sure that will be a big discussion in the future.”
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Saturday’s attack sparked strong reactions around the world. US President Joe Biden said his administration’s support for Israel’s security was “rock-solid and unwavering” and many European leaders condemned the violence, while Brazil said it would convene an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
The highly coordinated attack, which began Saturday morning, was unprecedented in its scale and scope and came on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 war in which Arab states bombed Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
“We had no warning whatsoever and it was a complete surprise that the war broke out this morning,” Efraim Halevy, the former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, told CNN.
The number of rockets fired by Palestinian militants was on an “unprecedented scale,” Halevy said, and this was “the first time” that Gaza had managed to “penetrate deep into Israel and take control of villages “.
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Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepts rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, seen from Ashkelon, southern Israel, October 7, 2023
Air raid sirens and rockets could be heard in Israel throughout the night and into the early hours of Sunday morning.
“This Iron Dome is being fired all around us right now, lighting up the sky here,” CNN international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson said in Zikim, Israel, referring to Israel’s missile defense system.
Interceptor missiles could be seen shooting through the air in bright flashes to destroy incoming missiles, while bangs could be heard in the background.
It is rare that Palestinian militants manage to cross into Israel from Gaza, which is sealed off and closely monitored by the Israeli military. Gaza is one of the most densely populated places in the world, an isolated coastal enclave of nearly 2 million people spread across 140 square miles.
The Hamas-ruled area has been largely cut off from the rest of the world by an Israeli land, air and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip since 2007. Egypt controls Gaza’s southern border crossing, Rafah. Israel has severely restricted the freedom of movement of the civilian population and controls the import of basic goods into the narrow coastal strip.
Fighting between the two sides has increased over the past two years.
The violence has been driven by frequent Israeli military attacks in Palestinian cities, which Israel says are a necessary response to the increasing number of attacks on Israelis by Palestinian militants.
They also come at a time of deep division in Israel, months after the country’s right-wing government pushed through a controversial plan to reduce the power of the country’s courts, triggering a social and political crisis.
Israelis are sharing photos of friends and family they say were kidnapped by Hamas militants, many of them women and children.
An Israeli mother told CNN she was on the phone with her children, ages 16 and 12, who were home alone when they heard gunshots outside and people trying to break in.
“They were scared to death. I can’t even imagine what they felt. And I wasn’t there to help,” said the mother, who wasn’t home at the time. CNN is not identifying the mother and her children for security reasons.
Then she heard the door open on the phone.
“I heard terrorists speaking to my teenagers in Arabic. And the youngest said to them, ‘I’m too young to walk,'” the mother said. “And the phone went off, the line went off. That was the last time I heard from them.”
Several people were taken hostage in an attack by Hamas militants on an Israeli music festival near the Israel-Gaza border.
Video on social media shows the kidnapping of an Israeli woman, Noa Argamani, and her boyfriend; She is seen on the back of a motorcycle being driven away as she pleads for help. Her boyfriend, Avinatan Or, is arrested by several men and walks with his hands folded behind his back.
CNN cannot independently verify the video. Argamani’s roommate told CNN that her family asked him to share the video with CNN, and Avinatan’s brother also told CNN affiliate Channel 12 in Israel that he was okay with the media showing the video – both in the Hope this will contribute to the couple’s safe release.
Another video authenticated and geolocated by CNN shows Shani Louk, a German-Israeli dual national who attended the festival, being taken hostage. The video shows Louk being led through Gaza, unconscious and motionless.
CNN has reached out to her family for comment but has not yet heard back. Louk’s mother, Ricarda, pleaded for help in a video obtained by German news agency Bild, saying: “We were sent a video in which I could clearly see our daughter unconscious in the car with the Palestinians as they drove through the Gaza Strip.”
CNN does not currently know Louk’s whereabouts or condition. CNN is not airing the video because it is graphic and disturbing.
Another Israeli resident, Yoni Asher, told CNN that his wife, who was visiting near the Gaza border with their young daughters, was among those abducted. On Saturday, he tracked her phone and discovered it was in Gaza; Later that day, he recognized her in a viral clip of people being loaded into the back of a truck flanked by Hamas fighters.
The video shows a militant placing a scarf around the head of a woman in the truck who Asher says is his wife. CNN could not independently verify the video.
An Israeli police spokesman told CNN that family members who want to report their loved ones missing come to the nearest police station when it is safe to leave their homes. Police recommended that relatives bring photographs and personal items from which DNA samples could be taken to facilitate identification.