Israelis were holding vigils and sombre ceremonies on Monday to mark a year since the October 7 Hamas terror attack.
The surprise cross-border attack, which caught Israel unprepared on a major Jewish holiday, shattered Israelis' sense of security, with more than 1,200 killed and hundreds of hostages taken.
Israel’s war in Gaza, launched in the weeks after the attack, continues, with a new ground offensive in Lebanon against Hezbollah threatening to drag the region into a wider conflict.
Israelis were expected to flock to ceremonies, cemeteries and memorial sites around the country, remembering the hundreds of victims, the dozens of hostages still in captivity and the soldiers wounded or killed trying to save them.
At 6.30am, the exact hour Hamas launched its attack, the families of those killed at the Nova music festival, joined by Israeli president Isaac Herzog, gathered at the site where almost 400 revellers were gunned down and from where many others were taken hostage.
After briefly playing the same trance music that was blared during the festival, hundreds of family members and friends of the victims stood for a moment of silence.
"When we are here, we are near our loved ones, this is the time they danced and fled," said Sigal Bar-On, whose niece Yuval Bar-On, 25, and her fiancee Moshe Shuva, 34, were supposed to get married in December 2023.
At 6.31am, four projectiles were launched from Gaza toward the Israeli communities that came under attack last year, the Israeli military said, but the ceremony was not disrupted.
In Gaza, where fighting continues, no formal commemorative event is planned.
At that same time, the families of hostages still held in Gaza - about 100, a third of whom are said to be dead - gathered near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Jerusalem residence.
They stood during a two-minute siren, replicating a custom from the most solemn dates on the Israeli calendar, Holocaust Remembrance and Memorial Day.
"We are here to remind (the hostages) that we haven't forgotten them," said Shiri Albag, whose daughter Liri is among the captives.
"We won't let you (Netanyahu) rest until all of them are back, every last one of them," she told the crowd, which carried the faces of the hostages on placards.
An official state ceremony focusing on acts of bravery and hope is set to be aired on Monday evening.
The ceremony was pre-recorded without an audience to avoid potential disruptions, in the southern city of Ofakim, where more than two dozen Israelis were killed.
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer pledged ahead of the anniversary to “stand with the Jewish community” and described the Hamas attacks as “the darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust”.
He said the “collective grief has not diminished” in the year since the attacks.
“One year on from these horrific attacks we must unequivocally stand with the Jewish community and unite as a country. We must never look the other way in the face of hate,” the Prime Minister said.
Around the world, events have been held to mark the anniversary.
In London’s Hyde Park, thousands gathered to remember the atrocity, with the mother of the sole British hostage still in Gaza telling the crowd he daughter remains “in hell”.
The sole British hostage still in Gaza a year after she was taken by Hamas has been "stripped of every human right" and remains "in hell", her mother said as she called for her safe return.
Mandy Damari spoke about her daughter Emily publicly for the first time, through tears, saying the 28-year-old had had her "joy and light locked away" for a year.
In Israel, anger at the government's failure to prevent the attack and frustration that it has not returned the remaining hostages prompted the families of those killed and taken captive to hold a separate event in Tel Aviv.
That event had been set to draw tens of thousands of people but was scaled back drastically over prohibitions on large gatherings due to the threat of missile attacks from Iran and Hezbollah.
Dozens of hostages remain in captivity, with no end in sight to their struggle.
Border communities have been upended through constant rocket fire from Hamas and Hezbollah and tens of thousands were displaced. Soldiers are being killed in Gaza and Lebanon.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, displaced most of the territory's 2.3 million population and sparked a humanitarian crisis that has led to widespread hunger.
World leaders have made repeated calls for a ceasefire and a diplomatic solution, which have so far been unsuccessful.
