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Gaza Militants Fire Barrages of Rockets Into Israel in Surprise Attack Here is what to know about the surprise attack on Israel.
(about 20 hours later)
Palestinian militants fired barrages of rockets into southern and central Israel on Saturday in a surprise attack, and the Israeli military said that armed gunmen had crossed the border fence in several locations and infiltrated Israeli border communities. Fighting continued into the evening on Saturday in one of the broadest invasions of Israeli territory in 50 years, as Palestinian militants from Gaza fired another round of rockets at Israel’s central heartland, including Tel Aviv, and Israel worked to clear militants from Israeli towns and retaliated with huge strikes on Gazan cities.
At least one woman was killed in the initial barrages, according to Israel’s ambulance service. It followed an enormous and coordinated early-morning assault on southern Israel, as the militants infiltrated 22 Israeli towns and army bases, kidnapped Israeli civilians and soldiers, and fired thousands of rockets toward cities as far away as Jerusalem.
The assault began without any warning at about 6:30 a.m. on the Jewish Sabbath and the morning of a festival, the last of the series of Jewish high holidays. It was almost 50 years to the day after the surprise attack by Egyptian and Syrian forces over Israel’s northern and southern frontiers at the opening of the 1973 war that traumatized the nation. Panic and disbelief rippled throughout Israel. Many people huddled inside their homes while hearing sirens, explosions and gunshots outside. Gruesome, graphic images flooded social media and spread throughout the world.
Within the first hour of the attack, salvos of rockets had slammed relentlessly into Israeli towns and cities, striking as far north as Rishon LeZion, about 10 miles south of Tel Aviv, and Ramla, near Israel’s international airport. At 8:15 a.m. sirens also sounded in central Jerusalem, and loud booms could be heard. By early evening, at least 250 Israelis had been reported dead and more than 1,400 wounded, Israeli officials said, while at least 234 Palestinians were killed and more than 1,600 wounded in either gun battles or airstrikes, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said.
Unverified images on television showed armed gunmen in a pickup truck shooting inside an Israeli community as well as at least one hang-glider in the sky. In an assault without recent precedent in its complexity and scale, the militants crossed into Israel by land, sea and air, according to the Israeli military, leading to some of the first pitched battles between large groups of Israeli and Arab forces on Israeli soil in decades. As of early evening there were two main battles taking place near the towns of Ofakim and Beeri, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said.
The Israeli military attributed the assault to Hamas, the militant organization that controls the Gaza Strip, an impoverished coastal enclave that has been under blockade by Israel and neighboring Egypt for about 15 years. “We will win this war, but the price is unbearable,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in an address Saturday night, warning of a protracted military campaign and “challenging days” ahead. He added, “We will turn all the places that Hamas hides in and operates from into rubble.”
“The Hamas terrorist organization will pay heavy price for its actions,” the Israeli military said in a statement. In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes filled cities with plumes of dark smoke, as morgues overran with the returning bodies of fighters. People frantically stocked up on food, and large parts of the enclave were plunged into darkness with limited electricity.
Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, announced a military operation “in defense of the Aqsa mosque,” the hotly contested holy site in Jerusalem that thousands of Jews have visited in recent weeks, and against the Israeli blockade imposed on Gaza. Here is what to know:
The militants who crossed the border into Israeli territory were armed with heavy machine guns, submachine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, according to Israeli media reports, and were firing at pedestrians, cars and houses. President Biden vowed from the White House on Saturday that the United States would “not ever fail to have their back,” referring to Israel. The attacks also drew condemnation from several other Western powers, with Hamas singled out for criticism.
The ambulance service, Magen David Adom, issued an urgent call for blood and was organizing a special blood donation drive at a hospital in central Tel Aviv. The poor coastal enclave of Gaza has been under blockade by Israel and neighboring Egypt for 16 years. Muhammad Deif, the leader of Hamas’s military wing, said in a recorded message that the group had decided to launch an “operation” so that “the enemy will understand that the time of their rampaging without accountability has ended.”
The military wing of Hamas, Al Qassam Brigades, described Saturday’s surprise assault on Israel as an operation against the Israeli blockade and “in defense of the Aqsa Mosque,” invoking a dispute around a site that is sacred to both Muslims and Jews and that is among the most deeply contested in the holy land.
Aaron Boxerman, Michael D. Shear and Raja Abdulrahim contributed reporting.