Hamas’s multi-pronged attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023 was unprecedented in scale. The panic and confusion it caused made many details of what was happening difficult to establish immediately.
Nearly one year later, the confirmed death toll, which includes hostages killed in captivity, now stands at 1,205.
Here is a blow-by-blow timeline of Israel’s deadliest day.
Caught by surprise
At 6:29 a.m. (0329 GMT), the Israeli army detected thousands of rockets being fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israeli border communities.
Palestinian militant group Hamas, which rules Gaza, said it had launched some 5,000 projectiles in an offensive dubbed “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” a reference to the mosque in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem that is Islam’s third-holiest site.
Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system kicked in but was quickly overwhelmed by the amount of incoming fire.
At the same time, Hamas fighters — the group would later say they numbered 1,200 — stormed across the border on motorbikes, in pickup trucks, even under motorized paragliders.
They used explosives and bulldozers to break through the fence separating Gaza from Israel and attacked nearly 50 different sites, including kibbutzim communities, army bases and a music festival.
Militants killed festival goers en masse and went door-to-door in farming communities, shooting residents dead in their homes.
In March, a United Nations report acknowledged there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that rapes were committed during the attack. It found “clear and convincing information” that some hostages taken on that day had been raped.
Slow army response
By 8:30 a.m., the militants had stormed six military bases: Erez at the northern end of the Gaza Strip, Nahal Oz opposite Gaza City, two others near the Beeri kibbutz, one in Reim near central Gaza, and two in the south close to the Egyptian border.
Residents of kibbutzim near Gaza were forced to fight the attackers on their own for hours, as the military was slow to come to their aid.
They would later describe cowering in safe rooms as terrorists tried to break down the doors, or taking whatever arms they had and rushing out to try to repel the assault.