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Hamas terrorists butcher civilians as stunned Israel suffers ‘9/11’ moment
At least 250 men, women and children slaughtered in surprise attack as rockets rain down and hostages are paraded through street
![A woman and a child are helped by police to flee the site of a rocket strike in southern Israel](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/world-news/2023/10/07/TELEMMGLPICT000352306010_16967047053850_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq1LtSvkWYrVQ82SxhdksKLnzdKRWvuAYd8yEALMlr2IM.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Israel was at war on Saturday after Hamas terrorists slaughtered at least 250 civilians and took dozens of hostages to Gaza in a major surprise assault that left the country reeling.
Fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas was still raging within Israeli territory by the evening, hours after the Islamist group crossed into the south of the country and moved from house to house gunning down civilians.
More rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel later in the day after an initial bombardment of 3,000 which sent crowds of Israelis into bomb shelters near the border and in Tel Aviv.
Hamas gunmen dragged off dozens of Israeli civilian and military hostages, with some paraded through the streets of Gaza in front of crowds of cheering Palestinians. The naked body of a woman was seen being driven in the back of a pick-up truck. In video footage too graphic to publish, men and young boys are seen spitting on her body.
At least two elderly women were also kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
Israel said the number of hostages taken was “substantial” but did not give specific figures. Children were among those taken hostage.
“We will take mighty vengeance for this wicked day,” Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said as he warned Hamas not to harm “even a single hair” of the civilians in captivity.
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Scenes of appalling violence played out as Hamas terrorists indiscriminately slaughtered civilians in around a dozen towns, including the large border community of Sderot. One particularly disturbing video showed gunmen firing assault rifles into bodies piled up inside a room, apparently to kill anyone playing dead.
By Saturday night analysts were calling the attack Israel’s “9/11” moment, as one former Israeli military chief expressed astonishment that his country had been caught off guard by the assault.
There were calls in Israel for a major ground invasion of Gaza in retaliation for the combined rocket assault and hostage raids.
Unconfirmed Arab media reports said as many as 50 Israeli hostages had been captured by Hamas, which could complicate Israel’s military response.
The staggeringly brutal assault, the worst ever launched by Hamas, could quickly escalate into a regional war if other pro-Iran groups, such as Hizbollah, join the fray in the coming days.
“Since this morning, the state of Israel has been at war,” Mr Netanyahu said in an address to the nation. He vowed to exact an “immense” price from Hamas, the Islamist group which since 2007 has controlled the Gaza Strip.
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On Saturday night, Mr Netanyahu invited opposition leaders to form a national unity government with his coalition as the state draws up a massive armed response to the attack.
Rishi Sunak said he was shocked by the violence and backed Israel’s right to defend itself. The Prime Minister was expected to tell his Israeli counterpart that Britain was ready to offer assistance at the earliest opportunity.
In the US, Joe Biden warned other hostile groups in the region not to join the attack against Israel. He was also due to speak with Mr Netanyahu on Saturday.
Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, spoke with Sameh Shoukry, the Foreign Minister of Egypt, to seek an immediate end to the offensive by the militants. Cairo is considered a key intermediary between Israel and Hamas.
Israel responded with air strikes on the Gaza Strip which Hamas officials said had killed at least 232 people.
Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, claimed the group was on the brink of a “great victory” and threatened further violence in the West Bank.
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In southern Israel, Sofie Berzon MacKie, a mother of two, told The Telegraph of how she took cover in her home in the kibbutz of Be’eri at around 6.30am when she heard explosions outside.
“We jumped out of the bed, grabbed my daughter, went to the safe room and shut the door,” Ms Berzon MacKie said.
A British-Israeli family with a ten-day-old baby was also caught up in the horrific attack, spending nine hours holed up in a safe room in Nirim before they were rescued by troops.
Thousands fled an all-night “Nature Party” in the south. Video footage showed large crowds of Israelis running for their lives across a field, while one video showed Hamas gunmen posing for photographs next to captured Israeli tanks.
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Some local reports said a number of Israeli military bases had been taken over, though its military officials denied claims that senior officers had been taken hostage. Children are also understood to be among those taken away.
Most of the Hamas gunmen appeared to have crossed into Israel by smashing through border fences, though they also mounted naval assaults in speed boats and even tried to fly in on motorised hang-gliders.
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It is unclear how Israel, which has one of the most advanced security services in the world, was caught off guard by the attack, which occurred on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah.
A combined ground and aerial assault of the Gaza Strip may prove to be Israel’s chosen form of retaliation, possibly along the lines of 2014’s Operation Protective Edge in which 2,300 Palestinians were killed.
Iran, Israel’s arch-foe in the region and a key supporter of Hamas, is suspected of playing a role in the attack behind the scenes. Israeli-Iran tensions have hugely escalated in recent months over Tehran’s nuclear programme, which Israel regards as an existential threat.
There were fears on Saturday that a second front could open on Israel’s northern frontier with Lebanon, where the Iranian-backed militia Hizbollah – which has far more powerful weapons than Hamas including long-range missiles, is based. Hizbollah warned Israel that a ground assault in Gaza would prompt a “major ground operation” in kind by their troops.
On Saturday afternoon, Israeli army officials said Lebanese fighters had attempted an incursion from the north on motorcycles but had been driven away with gunfire. The army was ready for any further escalation but was concentrating its efforts on Gaza, a spokesman said.
The United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon said it had increased its presence in areas of operations near Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, including “counter rocket-launching operations”.
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Donald Trump, who is running against Mr Biden in next year’s elections, criticised him for allowing “American taxpayer dollars” to help fund Hamas, whom he branded a “disgrace.”
Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, said Saturday’s attack was the moment that Hamas, which is designated a terror group by Britain, the EU and the US, showed its “true face”.
“Today we saw the true face of Hamas, a terrorist army whose only goal is the cold-blooded murder of innocent men, women, and children,” Mr Herzog said. “Innocent civilians were massacred and wounded, and many are still under attack.”
Israel’s latest conflict has been described as its biggest since the 1973 Yom Kippur war, in which Egyptian and Syrian forces launched a surprise assault on the Jewish state.
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Wars between Hamas and other Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip have been an annual occurrence since 2021, but the scale of the incursion by Hamas and the number of hostages taken is unprecedented.
On Saturday night Turkey said it was “ready to provide any help it can to ensure that the developments in question do not escalate further”.
Saudi Arabia, which has been holding normalisation talks that could be derailed by the outbreak of the war, called for an “immediate halt to the escalation between the two sides”.
In an apparent rebuke of Israel, Riyadh added that it had issued “repeated warnings of the danger of the explosion of the situation, as a result of the continued occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights, and the repetition of systematic provocations against its sanctities”.
The Hamas raids may have been launched to undermine the normalisation talks, which seemed to be nearing an agreement, though the complex and multi-pronged nature of the incursion suggests it had been carefully planned over a long period of time.