Hamas launches attack on Israel, Tel Aviv retaliates: Here’s what we know so far

📌 Hamas launches attack: The militants crossed into Israel by land, sea and air — firing at least 2,500 rockets into the country by late morning, according to the Israeli military. The leader of Hamas’s military wing, Mohammed Deif, said the assault was in response to the continued blockade of Gaza, Israeli raids inside West Bank cities over the past year, violence at Al Aqsa — the disputed Jerusalem holy site sacred to Jews as the Temple Mount — increasing attacks by settlers on Palestinians and continued growth of settlements.

Israeli police officers evacuate a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. The rockets were fired as Hamas announced a new operation against Israel. (AP Photo)

📌 Israel’s response: The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza says at least 198 people have been killed and at least 1,610 wounded in the territory in Israel’s retaliation after a wide-ranging Hamas assault into Israel. The toll came as Israel has carried out a number of airstrikes in Gaza and has clashed with gunmen at the border fence around the coastal territory.

📌 What Netanyahu has said: “We are at war,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address, declaring a mass mobilization of the country’s army reserves. “Not an ‘operation,’ not a ‘round,’ but at war.” “The enemy will pay an unprecedented price,” he added, promising that Israel would “return fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known.” He further said that operations were underway to clear the militants from infiltrated towns and that he had issued a call-up of reservists.

Smoke rises from an explosion caused by an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo)

📌 World reacts: As Israel announced a “state of war alert” on Saturday after militants from Gaza fired a barrage of rockets and sent gunmen into Israeli territory, leaders from across the world condemned the violence and called for restraint. However, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday congratulated Palestinian fighters, the semi-official ISNA news site reported. “We will stand by the Palestinian fighters until the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem,” it quoted Yahya Rahim Safavi as saying.

U.S. and Israeli national flags burn, as Iraqis gather next to fire during a protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, in Baghdad, Iraq, October 7, 2023. (Reuters)

📌 Timing of the attack: The serious invasion on Simchat Torah, a normally joyous day when Jews complete the annual cycle of reading the Torah scroll, revived painful memories of the 1973 Mideast war practically 50 years to the day, in which Israel’s enemies launched a surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

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