On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched the largest-ever terrorist attack on Israeli soil. The Palestinian organisation, considered a terrorist group by the EU and the US, stormed through the security fence separating Gaza and Israel in the early morning, killing 1,189 people, including 815 civilians, wounding 7,500 and taking 251 hostage. One year on, FRANCE 24 looks back at an event that shook the region and the world.
6:29am: Rockets rain down on southern Israel
Just after dawn on Saturday, October 7, 2023, Hamas unleashed a barrage of rockets and mortar shells on Israeli towns and military bases. It was the start of what the armed wing of Hamas called “operation Al-Aqsa deluge”, a reference to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest site.
This was the opening salvo in the deadliest terrorist attack against Israel since its birth in 1948.
The bloody incursion caught Israel off guard, timed to coincide with the Jewish Sabbath and the last day of the religious holiday of Sukkot.
This intelligence failure had a precedent: 50 years and one day earlier, on October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria had launched a surprise offensive, igniting the Yom Kippur War.
Israel's feted “Iron Dome” air defence system, deployed in 2011, was rapidly overwhelmed by the thousands of rockets being fired from Gaza.
Hamas claimed it fired 5,000 rockets in a 20-minute initial barrage, sending projectiles up to 80 kilometres into Israeli territory. Israel's military said 2,500 rockets were fired.
Air alert sirens sounded across Israeli towns and cities as far away as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beersheba. Civilians hurried to shelters. Many rockets were intercepted, others fell to the ground.
At least five deaths were reported, and there was damage to property in several towns, particularly on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip.
Hamas fighters cross the border
The rockets served to cover the coordinated incursion by Hamas commandos.
Hundreds of fighters from Hamas's armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, headed for dozens of points along the 59-kilometre barrier separating the Gaza Strip and Israel.
“The Hamas fighters were battle-hardened and knew the topography of the area,” said FRANCE 24's specialist in jihadist movements, Wassim Nasr, in the aftermath of the events.
Drones armed with explosives were used to neutralise the Israeli watchtowers topped with machine guns near the Gaza border.
Israeli military equipment positioned close to the border, including armoured vehicles, was also targeted. So were telecommunications infrastructure, including a pylon destroyed near the Be’eri kibbutz.
The aim was to quickly disable Israeli military communications and cameras near Gaza.
Explosives were used to create dozens of breaches in the security fences. Where they couldn't break through to Israel, Hamas fighters fired rockets from positions a few hundred metres from the border.
The surprise attack was well-coordinated and rapidly executed.
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.
Clashes erupted at several points along the Gaza security barrier, notably at the Erez border crossing in the north of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli soldiers were overwhelmed and some were captured as hundreds of vehicles from Gaza crossed the border to continue the assault.
Some 1,200 Hamas fighters – 2,900, according to Israel – were involved in the operation that day. The commandos had precise, designated objectives – a “battle plan”, as Israeli intelligence later called it.
The targets were both military and civilian. Most of the targets were hit in under 30 minutes.
Military bases stormed
The simultaneous attacks caught the Israeli security apparatus off guard. For several hours, civilians and soldiers were left to fend for themselves.
Between 6.30am and 8.30am, Hamas targeted several Israeli military bases.
The attacks spread from north to south, along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Hamas hit Erez, Zikim, Nahal Oz, Sufa, Re'im and two bases near Be’eri and Kerem Shalom. At 10am, the Israeli army acknowledged that armed Palestinians had entered at least three military sites.
Fierce fighting ensued. The bases are attacked with grenades, rocket launchers and automatic weapons, as numerous Hamas propaganda images later showed. In some instances, Israeli soldiers were roused from their sleep by the fighting.
At least fifty soldiers were killed in Nahal Oz, including many unarmed women. The Re'im military base, headquarters of the Gaza Division, was also captured. Israeli forces did not regain control of it until the end of the day.
The Supernova music festival, kibbutzim attacks
At around 7am, the first images showed Hamas vehicles and fighters in the streets of Sderot, a town of 30,000 inhabitants, just one kilometre from Gaza.
Two vans of Hamas fighters indiscriminately killed people in the streets. At least 20 civilians were shot dead along the road to the police station – the commandos’ main target. The police station was stormed and around ten policemen were killed. After almost a day of fighting, the Israeli army finally destroyed the building with the attackers still inside.
At the same time, several kibbutzim bordering the Gaza Strip were attacked: Yahini, Be’eri, Nirim, Nir Oz, Nir Yitzhak, Netiv HaAsara and Kfar Aza.
Originally farming collectives, thousands of people, mostly affiliated with the Israeli left, lived in these residential communities.
In the Be’eri kibbutz, the massacre lasted almost seven hours. Its thousand or so inhabitants suffered the deadliest attack on a single community on October 7.
Residents of Be’eri were methodically slaughtered, the attackers going from house-to-house for their victims. In all, 101 civilians were killed, along with 31 security personnel, and 32 people were taken hostage.
Read moreEn images : scènes de guerre et de chaos après l'attaque d’envergure du Hamas contre Israël
Another massacre occurred near Kfar Aza. Some 64 inhabitants or guests of the kibbutz were killed and 18 people taken hostage.
Those here and in other kibbutzim who had managed to take refuge in safe rooms would wait hours before the Israeli security forces arrived. Several months later, the Israeli security forces acknowledged that they had been disorganised and slow to send reinforcements.
The largest massacre of civilians took place at the Supernova music festival, near the Re'im kibbutz, where 3,000 people had gathered.
As the Hamas attackers approached, festival-goers were told by the organisers to gather in the car park and drive home. The only road leading out of the area was quickly congested.
Read moreIn Israel, Tribe of Nova festival survivors seek solace in trance music culture
It was at this point that several armed Hamas commandos arrived by air and road. People were told to flee the scene on foot, some tried to escape across the fields. The attackers targeted them indiscriminately. Some 364 people were massacred.
They account for more than half of the civilian casualties on October 7 and more than a quarter of the total number of fatalities that day. In addition to those killed, 44 people attending the festival were taken hostage.
Overall, 251 people were taken hostage during the October 7 attacks, including 74 from the Nir Oz kibbutz.
From 7:30am: Attacks posted on social media
Images and videos of the coordinated Hamas incursion were rapidly made public. Videos of Palestinian commandos in the streets of Sderot, probably filmed by Israeli civilians, were posted on social media. The first posts from Palestinian civilians surfaced on Telegram beginning at around 8am, showing multiple breaches in the security fence that separated the Gaza Strip and Israel.
Between 2,000 and 3,000 Palestinians, including Hamas commandos, members of other Palestinian factions and civilians, crossed the border.
Some Gazans advanced beyond the border area into Israeli territory. One video shows Palestinian civilians at the Magen kibbutz, a few kilometres from the border with Gaza. Some were filmed looting after the deadly Hamas attack.
Several photojournalists were on the ground, reporting.
Reuters photographer Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa documented an incursion of Palestinian civilians at the border, as did Yousef Masoud of the Associated Press. AP also used photos by Hassan Eslaiah, Ali Mahmud and Hatem Ali that day.
Several of the photojournalists were later wrongly accused in the Israeli media of having known about the Hamas attacks beforehand and being de facto accomplices.
Around 9am: Israeli politicians ‘at war’, strikes on Gaza
After the first few hours had passed, Israeli politicians, still in shock, began to speak out about the attacks, which were still in progress. Shortly after 9am, Defence Minister Yoav Galant declared: “Hamas made a grave mistake this morning: it started a war against the State of Israel.”
Israel's riposte was swift. Shortly before 10am, the first retaliatory air strikes began on the Gaza Strip. Israeli warplanes flattened the 11-storey Palestine Tower. This was the beginning of a long campaign to destroy the infrastructure of the Gaza Strip.
At 11:34am, Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the nation by video: "Citizens of Israel, we are at war, not in an operation or in rounds, but at war. This morning, Hamas launched a murderous surprise attack against the State of Israel and its citizens. We have been in this since the early morning hours.” The prime minister said that Hamas would pay “an unprecedented price”. He added, “We are at war and we will win.”
Netanyahu also announced that he was “launching an extensive mobilisation of reserves”.
On the afternoon of October 7, the Israeli army called up 360,000 reservists to reinforce its army of 170,000 soldiers.
Israeli authorities implemented an evacuation plan for civilians near the Gaza Strip. In all, 125,000 Israelis were forced to move. Some have still not returned to their homes.
Late morning: Hamas propaganda, gruesome videos
In the hours following the attacks, Hamas broadcast several propaganda videos glorifying its fighters. In particular, the Palestinian group broadcast footage from before October 7 revealing preparations for the attacks and selected extracts from the day’s offensive. One video, for example, showed an armed commando on a motorbike preparing for action in the courtyard of a house before he headed towards the Gaza-Israel border fence.
But Hamas's communications management quickly crumbled after the release of other videos showing incidents of particular savagery. These disturbing videos were filmed by Palestinian civilians, found on cameras taken from the bodies of killed Hamas fighters, or from surveillance cameras by kibbutzim and military bases. Summary executions of civilians, hostage-taking, grenades thrown into houses, corpses brought back to the Gaza Strip ... Many shocking scenes were documented that day, as our Focus documentary reporting shows.
Read moreFocus: The October 7, 2023 attack that shook Israel
The day was also marked by sexual assaults. 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.
In the afternoon: The Israeli army begins to regain control
From midday onwards, the Israeli security forces were deployed to recapture 22 localities in the south of Israel that were attacked by Hamas commandos. In particular, the army aimed to regain control of the Re’im military base and the Sderot police station.
In the late afternoon and evening, Hamas fired new rocket salvos at several cities, including Tel Aviv, Ashkelon and Sderot. Meanwhile, fighting continued in the Be’eri kibbutz, which was finally liberated 17 hours after being seized by Hamas commandos.
As night fell, the search continued for the attackers remaining on Israeli soil.
On October 10, the Israeli army declared that it had regained control of all the areas infiltrated by Hamas.
This article was adapted from the original in French.
