Live coverage: Devastation in Gaza as Israel retaliates to Hamas attacks
An Australian witness has revealed how Hamas gunmen blocked the road as they killed hundreds of young people at a festival in Israel.
World
Don't miss out on the headlines from World. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The death toll in Israel has sharply risen after Hamas fighters breached the border from Gaza in a surprise attack.
Hamas, the Palestinian militant group which rules the Gaza Strip, launched an extensive attack against Israel on Saturday, coinciding with the Jewish holiday Simchat Torah. It launched thousands of rockets from Gaza, while militants infiltrated Israeli communities, killing residents and abducting hostages.
In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared his nation was “at war” with Hamas.
The Israeli military continues to fight militants in southern Israel, and has launched air strikes across Gaza, destroying multiple buildings.
Read the timeline of the conflict here.
Hamas warns it will execute hostages
Hamas has warned Israel that if it bombs civilian houses in Gaza without warning then the militants will execute Israeli hostages in return, according to Reuters.
Hamas spokesperson Abu Obeida said that every Israeli massacre or attack without prior warning on Palestinian homes will be met with the execution of an Israeli captive.
Mortars fired from Lebanon
The Israel Defence Force says it has detected “a number of launches” from Lebanese territory into northern Israel, resulting in no casualties.
As tension on Israel’s northern border heats up, Israel’s military said troops killed two gunmen who crossed the border from Lebanon on Monday afternoon, local time. Meanwhile, Hezbollah said four of its members were killed in retaliatory strikes on southern Lebanon.
Six Israelis were injured in northern clashes, including one with critical injuries, Israeli media reports.
Iran vows to ‘make others regret it’ if attacked
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanaani, said that Iran would defend itself “forcefully, definitively and in a way that would make others regret it” if it is attacked. Kanaani made the comments in response to US officials saying anyone involved in the Hamas attack should be held accountable.
Iran took the lead in celebrations following the surprise attack by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas on Tehran’s arch-enemy Israel, even as it rejected accusations of direct involvement.
The Islamic republic’s backing was made manifest by billboards installed in Tehran’s major plazas, including Palestine Square.
“The great liberation has begun,” proclaimed one while a second showed the black and white chequerboard of the Palestinian keffiyeh gradually subsuming the white and blue flag of Israel.
The enormous images went on display just hours after Hamas launched its deadly and unexpected assault, dubbed “Al-Aqsa Flood” on Saturday.
‘This is only the beginning’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday to “change the Middle East” in Israel’s war with Palestinian militant group Hamas, as the army pounded the Gaza Strip with air strikes. “What Hamas will experience will be difficult and terrible … we are going to change the Middle East,” Netanyahu told officials in the country’s south where Hamas militants carried out a surprise attack on Saturday morning.
“This is only the beginning … we are all with you and we will defeat them with force, enormous force.”
‘Currently no chance’ of prisoner swap
Palestinian Islamist group Hamas is not open to negotiating a prisoner exchange with Israel during hostilities, a member of the militants’ political office in Doha said Monday.
“The military operation is still continuing … therefore there is currently no chance for negotiation on the issue of prisoners or anything else,” Hossam Badran, a Hamas official, told AFP from Doha.
“Our mission now is to make every effort to prevent the occupation from continuing to commit massacres against our people in Gaza, which directly target civilian homes,” he added.
Israel has said it is working to free at least 100 people kidnapped as Hamas militants stormed the Gaza border on Saturday, shooting people in nearby communities and towns.
Israel prepares for ground invasion
Israel is now attempting to recruit “as many people as possible” to prepare for a potential ground invasion.
So far over 300,000 army reservists have been called up.
On Monday afternoon, Hamas said four Israeli soldiers it had captured were killed as a result of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said a ground incursion in Gaza is “not off the table” but called for caution, considering the dozens of Israeli hostages that have been taken across the border.
“On one hand everything is on the table, nothing is off, including an incursion. On the other hand, we have people there, and we are worried sick about them,” Lapid said in an interview with CNN.
‘Complete siege’: Israel escalates further
Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, said his nation was imposing a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip on Monday afternoon, local time.
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed,” Mr Gallant said.
“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
Israel retakes communities around Gaza Strip
The Israeli army has regained control of all towns around the Gaza border, according to army spokesperson Daniel Hagari, who said fighting had died down through the morning.
He said skirmishes with Hamas fighters had been “isolated” in the last few hours.
“It is possible there are still terrorists in the area,” he told reporters.
Hagari said tanks, supported by combat helicopters and drones, are defending the breaches around the fence, with 15 out of the 24 threatened towns laid along the border being evacuated.
New images show devastation of Israel’s counter-attack
New footage has shown a snippet of Israel's counter-attack carried out through Sunday night.
The IDF targeted over 500 strategic locations of the terrorist organisations operating in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials said two Hamas operational assets were struck inside a mosque in Gaza. Further strikes made contact with another seven Hamas command centres, an Islamic Jihad command centre, and numerous multi-story buildings including the home of Hamas secretary Ruhi Mashtaa.
“We are still fighting. Seven to eight open places around Gaza where we still have warriors fighting terrorists,” Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said.
“It is taking us more time than we expected … We thought this morning we would be in a better place.”
Palestinian officials said the death toll in Gaza has risen to 436 on Monday morning local time. The toll reportedly includes 81 children and 61 women.
Images published by AFP on Monday showed the sheer devastation in downtown Gaza city, particularly at the Shati refugee camp where locals could be seen wandering the ruins.
בגל תקיפה לילי; צה"ל תקף למעלה מ-500 מטרות ×סטרטגיות של ××¨×’×•× ×™ הטרור ברצועת ×¢×–×”
— ×¦×‘× ×”×”×’× ×” לישר×ל (@idfonline) October 9, 2023
מטוסי ומסוקי קרב, כלי טיס וכוחות ×רטילריה תקפו במהלך הלילה מ×ות רבות של מטרות של ××¨×’×•× ×™ הטרור חמ×ס וג×"פ ברצועת ×¢×–×” >> pic.twitter.com/23vjIKeaW5
Israel troops going ‘door to door’ as sun rises on Gaza
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson says troops are “still hunting down the last terrorist inside Israeli territory” as dawn broke on Monday.
“Our troops are going door to door and house to house, looking for, and in many cases, engaging with last terrorists inside Israel,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said.
While there are still gaps in the border, Conricus said most chokepoints had been “temporarily patched up and guarded”.
The remaining Hamas militants likely “crossed into Israel first, and then simply were not able to get back and were stuck in Israeli terrain”. Officials are now worried those remaining militants will choose to continue to target civilians and “go out fighting” as opposed to capture.
“Tomorrow morning, they will see a lot of their military infrastructure destroyed. And I think that there will be significant losses for Hamas,” Conricus said.
Hamas says US response is an act of aggression
Hamas accused the United States of “aggression against Palestinian people” by responding to the violence with a navy carrier strike group sent to the Mediterranean Sea.
“These movements do not frighten our people nor their resistance, which will continue to defend our people and our holy places,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Kassem said in a statement.
The Pentagon said it was sending the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and its accompanying warships to the eastern Mediterranean, while boosting fighter aircraft squadrons in the region.
The US president further “pledged his full support for the Government and people of Israel in the face of an unprecedented and appalling assault by Hamas terrorists.”
Twisted tactics used by Hamas gunmen
The disturbing tactics used by Hamas gunmen to kill hundreds of young people at a music festival in southern Israel have been revealed by a witness.
The bodies of 250 people were discovered at the site of the Supernova music festival by emergency response teams today.
The festival, which was taking place in the desert near Kibbutz Re’im — close to the border with Gaza, was attacked by Hamas gunman on Saturday morning.
Horrifying photos have now emerged of bodies piled up in the aftermath of the massacre.
Australian man Daniel Moritz was at the festival and told ABC Radio that the festival was a “place of love, peace, dancing”.
“Around 6am we noticed bombings above our heads. No sirens went off. We were totally surprised, totally unaware and unprotected,” he said.
Mr Moritz fled in a car with five friends after luckily parking close to the entrance of the festival.
“We actually found a hole in the fence we managed to get out faster,” he said.
“We started to head north and suddenly machine guns started going off. Shooting at us, we heard the whistles of the bullets flying over our heads. We are ducking down in the car and the driver, a good friend of ours, was post-traumatic already.”
He also revealed the horrific tactics used by the attackers — how they blocked the road in order to kill more people.
“A few metres away, there was a full line of terrorists blocking the road. Four lanes, they were blocking them with seven pick-up cars, motorcycles, guns.
“We noticed on our right side, a terrorist with a machine gun unloading at us with all the force that he has, trying to hit us. Somehow with a lot of luck we got out of it without anyone injured.”
Harrowing footage posted on social media showed people fleeing in panic from Hamas militants.
ZAKA, a volunteer group that deals with human remains after terror attacks and natural disasters, told Israeli media that it had collected the bodies of more than 250 people.
Parents of youth who were attending the festival have been frantically searching for news of their missing children.
Tattoo artist Shani Louk, 30, was one of the people seized from the festival.
The German national’s partly-naked and battered body was later paraded through the street by Hamas fighters as people spat on her body.
MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan wrote: “I cannot imagine how horrific a massacre this must have been. 260 people gunned down. To put that in context, that’s the equivalent of more than five Pulse nightclub shootings. Heartbreaking.”
As the scale of the assault on southern Israel became apparent, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari accused Hamas of being “more brutal than ISIS”.
Devastation in Gaza
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been launching extensive air strikes in Gaza in an attempt to “devastate the capabilities of the Hamas terror group”.
Command posts have been targeted along with a building used by Hamas’s naval forces, the IDF said.
The bombing is having a huge impact on the population in Gaza — one of the world’s most densely populated areas.
The United Nations says 123,538 Palestinians had been displaced in Gaza since the conflict started.
Nineteen members of one family were killed in southern Gaza, the Times of Israel reports.
Nasser Abu Quta said the IDF fired a warning shot, signalling his neighbour’s home would be targeted.
But he claimed an explosion instead destroyed his home, killing 19 members of his family including his wife and cousins. Five other people were also killed.
Death toll tops 1100
The combined death toll in Israel and Gaza has passed 1100, with thousands more wounded.
Officials in Israel say more than 700 Israelis were killed after Hamas launched a surprise attack early Saturday morning.
Israeli has been pounding Gaza with air strikes and at least 400 Palestinians have been killed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised “mighty vengeance” against Hamas and also warned the militant group that it would be held responsible for the estimated 130 Israeli hostages in Gaza.
A US National Security Council spokesman confirmed that “several” Americans had been killed in the attack.
Iran ‘helped plot attack’ on Israel
Senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah say that Iranian security officials helped plot the surprise attack on Israel for weeks, according to a new Wall Street Journal report.
Hamas, which is a designated terrorist organisation, has long been backed by Iran.
Details of the operation were hashed out in meetings with members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas — which rules Gaza — and Lebanese-based Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group.
The plan was developed in August and the green-light for the attack was given in Beirut last week, the report states.
Iran is considered Israel’s arch-enemy.
Lina Khatib, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, told the Journal that the attack could not have happened without co-ordination with Iran.
“Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, does not single-handedly make decisions to engage in war without prior explicit agreement from Iran.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken previously said there was not yet evidence Iran was involved in the assault.
The US has announced it is sending more fighter jets to the region, in part to deter Iranian aggression or an extension of the conflict beyond Israel’s borders.
130 Israeli captives in Gaza
Hamas senior official Moussa Abu Marzouk has claimed that 130 Israelis are being held hostage in Gaza.
That number includes civilians and high-ranking members of the Israel Defense Forces.
People were snatched from the Supernova music festival as well as from homes in towns located in southern Israel.
The elderly and families including women and young children are among the captives.
It is likely the hostages are spread out across the heavily-populated Gaza Strip and will be kept below ground with no means of communication.
An Israeli invasion of Gaza, which seems possible, could endanger the hostages.
Negotiations to secure their release could stretch on for years.
Biden orders US ships and warplanes to move closer to Israel
US President Joe Biden ordered “additional support for Israel in the face of this unprecedented terrorist assault by Hamas,” the White House said.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Washington “will be rapidly providing the Israel Defense Forces with additional equipment and resources, including munitions”.
Austin also said he had directed aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and its accompanying warships to the eastern Mediterranean, and that Washington was augmenting fighter aircraft squadrons in the region.
Several foreign countries have reported nationals killed, abducted or missing in the fighting, among them Brazil, Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Nepal, Thailand, Ukraine and the United States.
Ominous development as Hezbollah strikes
Hamas, or in some cases only its military wing, is designated a terrorist organisation by Australia and many other countries, including the United States and United Kingdom.
The same is true of Hezbollah, a political party and militant group with significant power in Lebanon, which borders Israel to the north.
On Sunday morning, local time, Hezbollah shelled an Israeli military position in the Shebaa farms area, a strip of disputed territory in the Golan Heights. It has been held by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967.
“The radar sites Zibdin and Ruwaisat Al-Alam were bombed with large numbers of artillery shells and guided missiles,” Hezbollah said in a statement.
“We targeted three Israeli occupation sites.”
Later, a senior Hezbollah official made ominous remarks at an event in Beirut’s outskirts.
“Our history, our guns and our rockets are with you. Everything we have is with you,” the official, Hashem Safieddine, said to the Palestinians.
Israel responded to the attack with artillery strikes of its own back into Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah positions.
The post below from the Israeli Defence Forces, which includes drone footage of one such strike, reads: “Documentation of the Hezbollah infrastructure attack earlier today in the Mount Dov region.”
תיעוד מתקיפת תשתיות חיזב×ללה ×ž×•×§×“× ×™×•×ª×¨ ×”×™×•× ×‘×ž×¨×—×‘ הר דב: pic.twitter.com/Myrb7r1pqZ
— ×¦×‘× ×”×”×’× ×” לישר×ל (@idfonline) October 8, 2023
UNIFIL, the United Nations peacekeeping force deployed on the border between Israel and Lebanon, issued a statement confirming the exchange of fire had happened.
“Early this morning, UNIFIL peacekeepers detected several rockets fired from southeast Lebanon towards Israeli-occupied territory in the general area of Kafr Chouba, and artillery fire from Israel to Lebanon in response,” it said.
“We are in contact with authorities on both sides of the Blue Line, at all levels, to contain the situation and avoid a more serious escalation. Our peacekeepers remain in their positions and on task. They continue to work, some from shelters for their safety.
“We urge everyone to exercise restraint and make use of UNIFIL’s liaison and co-ordination mechanisms to de-escalate to prevent a fast deterioration of the security situation.”
The “Blue Line” mentioned in that statement is the UN-imposed demarcation line between Israel and Lebanon.
Al-Jazeera reports the feeling in Lebanon was “very tense” in the wake of the incident, with locals fearful of being drawn into the conflict.
“Israeli drones are now flying around near the Lebanese border and people, even in the capital city Beirut, are scared and worried,” said reporter Zeina Khodr.
“Lebanese (people) now say this is not their war.
“There is already a political and economic crisis, and Lebanon has few friends in the international sphere.
“Hezbollah knows this and are treading carefully. So there is escalation, but so far, to a certain extent, it is relatively contained.”
Hamas claims it didn’t attack civilians
Human rights groups have condemned Hamas for targeting Israeli civilians.
“We are deeply alarmed by the mounting civilian death tolls in Gaza, Israel and the occupied West Bank and urgently call on all parties to the conflict to abide by international law and make every effort to avoid further civilian bloodshed,” Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said yesterday.
“Under international humanitarian law, all sides in a conflict have a clear obligation to protect the lives of civilians caught up in the hostilities.”
Speaking to Al-Jazeera today, Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan rejected that criticism.
“You have to differentiate between settlers and civilians,” said Hamdan.
“We hope that Amnesty has the humility to send us more developed weapons (with which) to attack only the soldiers.
“We are not targeting civilians on purpose. We have declared settlers are part of the occupation and part of the armed Israeli force. They are not civilians.”
Israeli tourists shot dead in Egypt
Two Israeli tourists and their Egyptian guide were killed by a policeman on Sunday.
The police officer in Alexandria, an Egyptian city, opened fire “at random” at a visiting Israeli tour group using “his personal weapon”, the state-affiliated service Extra News said, quoting a security source.
A fourth person was wounded and the policeman was “immediately arrested”, it added.
– with AFP
Originally published as Live coverage: Devastation in Gaza as Israel retaliates to Hamas attacks
Shocking footage of young girls emerges
A young girl, no older than ten, trudges barefoot down the side of the road, her sister slung over her shoulder. Then a shocked passerby stops her.
Australia’s $7 billion move amid ‘arms race’
Australia is spending billions on defence upgrades as it contests a regional “arms race”.