Israel attack: Hamas paragliders, trucks led dawn raid
Hamas forces stormed through Israel’s defences just before 6am. Palestinian gunmen were soon walking through towns, battering down front doors — and taking people away. How did it unfold? And how did it escalate so quickly?
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Bar Perry woke up to the sound of war.
At 6am she heard the scream of rockets, followed by sirens, in her hometown of Sderot, Israel, a mile from Gaza. Very soon she was being sent messages about Palestinian gunmen walking through the town, knocking on front doors, battering them down – and taking people away.
“They shot people and entered homes, kidnapped people,” said Perry, 36, who was still trapped in a safe room with her husband and their dog yesterday afternoon.
“People shared footage from safety cameras showing it all happen. There were gunshots, screams.
“The amount of terror and cruelty is beyond compare. It’s like a horror movie.”
Early yesterday Palestinian fighters began their most daring and brutal raid on Israel in decades.
Before dawn broke, the highly guarded fence between Gaza and Israel was breached. Hamas troops flooded into the country by land, sea and air.
Palestinian fighters set fire to tanks and occupied towns, with dozens of Israelis reportedly taken back to Gaza as hostages.
Unverified videos on social media show them handcuffed and bloodied, paraded through the streets by Hamas terrorists carrying Kalashnikovs.
Thousands of rockets were fired from Gaza, and Israel launched air strikes in retaliation.
Just over three hours after the first rockets were fired, the Israeli government declared that the country was at war.
The attack appeared to take the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) by surprise, the strike happening on Shabbat and the public holiday of Simchat Torah.
How did it unfold? And how did it escalate so quickly?
Combined attack breaches ‘Secure’ border
The first sign of the attack came at about 6am when Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group, fired a barrage of rockets at southern Israel.
This provided cover for an infiltration of fighters over the border, acknowledged by the IDF at 7.30am.
The Israeli-Gaza border is one of the most heavily fortified on Earth, defended not only by cement barricades, watchtowers and endless rows of razor wire but also by Israel’s supposedly state-of-the art security and surveillance systems.
It is heavily guarded by soldiers, and anyone crossing has to walk for a considerable distance through no-man’s land to reach the Gazan side, after thorough Israeli security checks.
“It was a combined attack, they did it simultaneously,” Major Nir Dinar of the IDF said. “From the videos we can see that the fence is cut, which surprised us because it’s very strong and it never happened until now.
“It’s surprising they did it. In some places, they [blew up] the fence with improvised explosive devices. Then they rammed vehicles through it.”
At the same time, he said, fighters using paragliders landed in Israel.
The Qassem Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, posted a slickly produced video, some of which appeared to be shot by GoPro cameras and drones, which apparently showed its fighters flying over the border wall in the motorised gliders just after sunrise, before storming an Israeli army post.
A video shared by the Israeli navy showed a group of black-clad men approaching the coast at high speed, crouched in a small boat, before being blown out of the water in an explosion. The navy claimed it showed a failed attack by Hamas’s naval commandos.
Israeli officials have repeatedly voiced concern about Hamas’s maritime program which they claimed could be used to stage attacks from the sea.
‘2200 rockets in six hours’
By 8am Hamas had claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Mohammed Deif, head of the Qassem Brigades, said: “We have already warned the enemy before.
“The occupation committed hundreds of massacres against civilians. Hundreds of martyrs and wounded died this year due to the crimes of the occupation.
“We announce the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.”
Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem is the third holiest site in Islam and is located in the area the Jews call Temple Mount.
Hamas claimed to have launched 5000 rockets in the first 20 minutes of the battle but that figure was later disputed by the IDF, which put it at 2200 in six hours.
To put that into context, 4000 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel during the 50-day war in 2014.
The border fence breached, Hamas combatants poured into Israeli territory.
The Times of Israel reported fighting in seven locations with gun battles in the towns of Kfar Aza, Sderot, Sufa, Nahal Oz, Magen, Be’eri, and the Re’im military base.
In an unverified video, a bulldozer crashed through the border fence at Gaza, tearing barbed wire with it and allowing Palestinians to come streaming through.
Another showed about a dozen fighters riding through a hole in the 6m-high, razorwire-topped fence on motorcycles.
There were reports of people fleeing after partygoers at a desert rave in Re’im were ambushed by Hamas.
Omar, who was at the party, told Haaretz: “Suddenly shots started and we saw people running towards us with weapons. People ran in every direction, got on any vehicle they saw and fled the scene.
“There are people hiding in the area. There were hundreds of people here.”
‘They are going door-to-door’
Videos circulating on social media showed Palestinian fighters driving army vehicles on Israeli streets.
They wore bulletproof vests and held their machine guns high. Israeli tanks along the border appear to have been captured by Hamas and set on fire.
Elsewhere a man who seemed to be an Israeli soldier in uniform was pulled alive from a burning tank by three Palestinian fighters, while the person taking the film laughed.
When the Palestinians entered southern Israel, videos shot by residents show them fanning out at junctions in residential neighbourhoods, shooting at passers-by.
Residents of Be’eri said attackers were going from house to house. Gunfire echoed as the residents locked themselves indoors.
In Sderot the invaders took control of the police station.
Adel Raemer, a retired English teacher, was woken up by the noise of rockets at the Nirim kibbutz, near the border.
“There are terrorists who have infiltrated my community, my kibbutz,” she said, her voice shaking.
“They’re going door to door and trying to get in. I opened the door to my safe room and I saw that the latch on my window had been broken, so they tried to get into my house.”
Israeli civilians as well as soldiers appear to have been treated with exceptional brutality by Hamas.
One video shows a young Israeli woman being held at gunpoint, her hands bound behind her, forced into a jeep by fighters while others cheer.
An unverified video shows what appears to be an unconscious Israeli soldier dragged out of a car into the street where he is kicked and stamped on.
Another shows an elderly woman driven along on a golf cart accompanied by three Hamas combatants.
Shot dead as they drove
Images circulated on social media of Israelis shot dead as they drove their cars, slumped over steering wheels or left lying in the road.
By 9.20am Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, said Hamas had made a “grave mistake” by starting a war. Israeli soldiers are “fighting the enemy at all the infiltration sites. The state of Israel will win this war”, he said.
The defence forces then launched “Operation Iron Swords”, saying that dozens of fighter jets were carrying out attacks on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip.
Rockets screamed in both directions.
Palestinian officials said Israel’s retaliation had killed at least 198 people and wounded 1,610 as Gaza residents rushed to stock up on food and water.
In Ashkelon, north of the border, the sky filled with plumes of smoke from cars struck by rockets. Shrapnel was strewn across the streets.
Rockets later reached cities in central and southern Israel, reaching as far as Jerusalem. By 10.40am nearly 200 Israelis had been wounded, with at least six people confirmed killed. Shortly after, an Israeli government official said that an investigation was starting into how Israeli intelligence failed to discover that such a large and well co-ordinated attack was coming.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, said the country was at “war” and that it “will win”. “Our enemy will pay the of a price which it has never known,” he said in a video.
Israel sent warplanes to strike Hamas, mobilised reservists for all IDF units, deployed bomb squads to clear rocket debris and launched an operation to “reinforce” the communities near to Gaza. At about midday there were 21 “active fronts” and the IDF had still not regained control of any of the locations infiltrated in southern Israel, with at least 60 Palestinian fighters at large.
Tension for weeks
Tensions had been high for several weeks after a series of “lone wolf” attacks in Israel by Palestinian gunmen and tit-for-tat violence in the West Bank. Israeli military operations had targeted the Jenin refugee camp.
Throughout yesterday Israeli civilians cried out for help, saying that there had been hours of mass infiltration without news of a rescue, while their neighbours were being carried off by terrorists.
By the afternoon help had still not arrived for Adel Raemer at the Nirim kibbutz. “We are waiting for the army to come but it’s massive,” she said. “It’s so widespread they [the IDF] are having a hard time keeping up.” At 3.20pm there were more than 70 Israelis confirmed dead with a further 908 wounded.
The air strikes intensified, Israel trying to reclaim their ground, Hamas trying to maintain it. The Qassem Brigades posted a video which they said was Hamas drone footage showing a strike that hit an Israeli Merkava tank.
Half an hour later came another strike: this time appearing to hit an Israeli military installation. Israel intensified its bombardment of the Gaza Strip as the day went on, missiles striking two high-rise buildings which the Israeli armed forces said housed Hamas’s “military infrastructure”, as well as the Palestine Tower in the heart of Gaza City.
The 11-storey building was flattened within seconds, sending clouds of black dust and flames into the sky and covering the streets with rubble.
Doctors Without Borders said Israeli air strikes hit two hospitals, killing a nurse and an ambulance driver. “Health care facilities cannot become targets,” said the organisation. “We ask all parties to respect health infrastructures which must remain a sanctuary for people seeking treatment.” Later Israel claimed to have rid some areas of Hamas fighters.
“In a few places we have confirmed there are no more terrorists there and it’s safe now but there are still terrorists elsewhere,” Dinar of the IDF said. “Hundreds of Hamas terrorists are estimated to have entered Israel. There is no evidence that they have gone further than southern Israel but there have been attempts.”
At 6pm, 12 hours after Bar Perry woke to the sounds of rockets, fighting was still raging at 22 locations near Gaza.
For millions of people on both sides affected by the conflict, there was no end insight.
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