The deadly Hamas rampage across southern Israel

Under a barrage of rockets, hundreds of Hamas gunmen stormed into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Oct. 7, on motorbikes, paragliders and four-wheel drives, unleashing death, destruction and despair on nearby towns and villages.

Gangs of militants appeared suddenly in the heart of small Israeli communities, shattering the calm of daily life, killing and kidnapping stunned residents as others cowered for hours in safe rooms until Israeli soldiers liberated them.

Fierce gun battles raged, in some cases for days, before Israeli forces finally took back control. Many traumatised survivors emerged only to find the bodies of loved ones, neighbours and gunmen strewn across their roads, gardens and fields.

In response to the attack, Israel has put Gaza, home to 2.3 million people, under siege and launched the most powerful bombing campaign in the 75-year-old history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, destroying whole neighbourhoods and killing more than 1,400 Palestinians, according to Gazan authorities.

Reuters has pieced together authenticated video footage and witness accounts that paint a picture of the unexpected ground assault by Hamas and rocket barrages that ripped communities apart and killed at least 1,300 people in Israel, according to public broadcaster Kan.

With misinformation and disinformation clouding what actually happened on the ground in Israel, properly verified video footage, some of which is only just emerging, can play a critical role in establishing events.

Be’eri

Be’eri, an agricultural kibbutz close to Gaza which once hosted Gazan farm workers, was one of the first towns hit by Hamas on Saturday at the start of the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in Israel’s history.

Video footage shows Hamas gunmen manhandling Be’eri residents and pulling them along. In another video, the same residents are seen again, lying dead further up the road. CCTV footage also shows gunmen shooting the occupants of a car as it tried to drive through a security gate at the kibbutz.

Israeli paramedic Hami Atias, one of the first-responders who went into Be’eri in the aftermath of the raid, said he saw the bodies of scores of men, women and children gunned down or blown up by militants.

“Nothing could prepare me for what happened there. The smell of bodies – as many times as I’ve showered this week – I can’t get that smell out,” the 36-year-old Atias said.

Israeli media have reported that the militants killed at least 100 people in Be’eri. The Israeli army said it intervened and killed up to 100 Hamas gunmen.

Militants killed indiscriminately and kidnapped children and elderly people, witnesses and family members said.

“My son was kidnapped. He’ll be 16 years old in two weeks,” said Mir Shani, a 46-year-old physiotherapist from Be’eri.

Resident Golan Abitbul said he got into a brief gunfight with the militants.

“I saw a group trying to enter my front yard. I opened fire and they replied with a burst. I don’t know why but they decided to go away,” he said, speaking from a hotel near the Dead Sea where victims and families were still taking shelter.

Sderot

On the highway near Sderot, the largest Israeli town overlooking the Gaza strip, gunmen sprayed cars with bullets leaving some slumped dead in their vehicles and others sprawled on the tarmac.

One resident reported seeing multiple bodies and bullet-scarred vehicles in the southern Israeli town where groups of Hamas gunmen were still fighting Israeli troops 12 hours after the attack was launched.

“I went out, I saw loads of bodies of terrorists, civilians, cars shot up. A sea of bodies, inside Sderot along the road, other places, loads of bodies,” said Shlomi from Sderot.

Video footage showed Hamas gunmen in a white pickup cruising through the town, where they also seized a police station and gunned down elderly residents waiting at a bus stop.

Re’im

Thousands of people at an all-night music festival near Gaza’s border were among the first targets of Palestinian gunmen who descended on the rave in the Negev Desert on paragliders and by road under cover of massive rocket barrages.

As the Hamas militants opened fire, stunned revellers fled across dusty fields, tried to escape in their cars, played dead among those already killed in a bid to survive, or crawled into hiding places in fields or under vehicles.

“It was just a massacre, a total massacre,” said 26-year-old Arik Nani, who escaped from the festival, where he was celebrating his birthday, after hiding for hours.

Israeli emergency services said 260 bodies had been recovered from the site of the desert festival, where drone footage of the aftermath showed rows of wrecked and abandoned cars, a grim testimony to the scale of the attack.

Social media posts showed some of those taken captive being led away by jubilant gunmen. Dashcam footage showed a man being shot at point-blank range in his hiding place under a car, and a woman with her hands in the air being gunned down.

“I live on the Gaza border and I’ve seen things in my life, but I’ve never felt it this close,” said 23-year-old Zohar Maariv, who had to jump out of the car she was escaping in when it came under fire from two sides. “I have never felt so close to death.”

Kfar Aza

The scenic kibbutz of Kfar Aza, an Israeli farming community of about 750 people just 3 km from the Gaza Strip, was among the communities hit hardest by the Hamas assault on southern Israel.

Israeli Defence Forces took the foreign press through the site on Tuesday, the stench of death heavy in the air as reporters walked the paths of the kibbutz.

Bodies of Israeli residents and Hamas militants lay out in the grounds among burned out houses, strewn furniture and torched cars as Israeli soldiers took away the dead.

Outside one of the small houses, the body of a resident was covered by a purple sheet with a bare foot protruding. Elsewhere bodies of the Hamas gunmen lay face down on the ground.

Kfar Aza attack survivor Avidor Schwartzman said he hid with his wife and one-year-old daughter in the safe room of their house for more than 20 hours before being rescued by Israeli soldiers, emerging to confront a scene of “pure hell”.

“There were bodies everywhere. Dead bodies everywhere,” the 38-year-old said. “We saw our little piece of paradise, our little piece of heaven, was totally burnt – burnt and with blood everywhere.”

Ashkelon

In Ashkelon, residents awoke on Oct. 7 to the sound of air raid sirens as rockets rained down on the coastal city 12 km north of Gaza. While Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted many of the rockets fired by Hamas militants, some hit Ashkelon, setting cars and buildings ablaze and destroying homes.

The rocket barrages have continued since then with an Israeli hospital in Ashkelon hit on Wednesday, though no casualties were reported.

Source » reuters.com