October 7, 2023, what happened on the day of the Hamas attack on Israel

It all begins at 6:29 am on Saturday 7 October 2023. Air warning sirens are ringing throughout Israel. Under the cover of a massive rocket launch, Hamas terrorists are breaching the security barrier separating Gaza from the Jewish state. In the following minutes the fence was broken down in over 60 places by the attackers (who also used bulldozers and excavators), while others entered Israel on paragliders or on motorcycles.

With the border fence finally broken, terrorists can quickly raid residential areas near the border. Above all, the kibbutzim - the term means "meeting place" - are attacked, small self-sufficient Israeli villages, very often agricultural, where life is usually based on the sharing of goods. Kfar Aza and Nir Am are the first from which the alarms start, followed, from 6:39 onwards, by many others. In kibbutzim, generally, there is an internal security team, and the people who are part of it try to respond to the assault by Hamas men.

That night, not far from the border, a music festival, Nova, had also taken place in Israel, bringing together thousands of young people to dance outdoors. The party was interrupted around 7.05am, a few minutes after the sirens were activated. Some of the participants leave immediately. Others instead remain on site or get stuck in traffic while trying to leave the festival: and it is precisely at that moment that the terrorists arrive. Nova becomes the scene of the worst massacre in the history of Israel: at least 347 Israelis are killed there.

In the first phase of its attack, Hamas men proceed undisturbed. In fact, on Saturdays and during Jewish holidays, the Israeli army (IDF) usually reduces the number of soldiers in the border area with Gaza, often simultaneously granting leave to a considerable number of soldiers and commanders. As a result, at the time of the attack on October 7, the army found itself exposed compared to a normal day. And this had a significant impact on the timeliness of Israel's response in the first moments after the attack began.

Moments after terrorists breach the fence, IDF positions along the border or in its immediate vicinity are stormed. The garrison soldiers immediately find themselves outnumbered, as do the support and relief forces that slowly come to their aid. Some soldiers are killed after running out of ammunition, others will fight with little means for long hours.

In the hours following the attack, another front also emerged: that of kidnappings. Hamas took some of the survivors hostage and brought them to Gaza during its escape after the massacre. A total of 253 Israelis and foreign citizens, alive or dead (including children and elderly people) were kidnapped and brought to the Strip. Over one hundred of them returned to Israel, the vast majority as part of hostage deals signed between Israel and Hamas in the months and years that followed.

In response to the attacks, Netanyahu decided almost immediately to launch Operation "Iron Swords", with bombings of the Gaza Strip. A few weeks later, the ground offensive also began with street-to-street fighting. It was the first chapter of a story that isn't over yet. To date, the Israeli grip on the Strip is still tight, and in Gaza there have been almost 80 thousand deaths.