IAN GALLAGHER reveals how Palestinian terrorists crossed into Israel

Onslaught from land, sea and air: IAN GALLAGHER reveals how Palestinian terrorists crossed into Israel and launched a co-ordinated, multi-pronged assault that left the world recoiling in horror

• Hamas militants have been accused of kidnapping Israeli civilians and soldiers 

 The world recoiled in horror yesterday as Israel suffered its worst onslaught for 50 years – caught off guard by unprecedented land, sea and air attacks.

In a co-ordinated, multi-pronged assault, Palestinian terrorists crossed into Israel from the Gaza Strip, seizing settlements and capturing and murdering civilians celebrating a Jewish holiday.

In a video widely shared on social media, a woman screaming ‘Don’t kill me!’ can be seen being driven off on a motorbike by a gunman.

The Mail on Sunday has learned she is Noa Argamani, 25, a student who was seized at an outdoor peace festival she had attended with her boyfriend close to the border.

Other footage showed captured soldiers and civilians – some dead – being paraded through Gaza’s streets.

A young girl looks at the wreckage caused by an Israeli airstrike on Saturday

Israeli civilians and soldiers were taken off the street and driven back into Gaza

Rockets are fired from Gaza toward Israel on Saturday night, October 7

Areas of Tel Aviv in Israel have seen significant damage from the air strikes, which are overwhelming Israeli defences

A man carries a crying child as they walk past a building destroyed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza City

Heralding the start of what Hamas called ‘the greatest battle to end the last occupation on Earth’, Gaza’s ruling group had earlier fired more than 2,500 rockets at Israeli targets, killing more than 200 and injuring 980.

Elsewhere, some of the invaders used motorised paragliders to attack enemy bases with machine guns.

Many more gunmen poured into Israel in a convoy of trucks, cars and motorcycles after an advance party bulldozed the heavily fortified border, previously considered impregnable. Others came ashore by boat. The attacks instantly plunged the region into all-out war.

Israel vowed revenge and responded with a devastating missile blitz that left 230 dead and 1,610 injured in Gaza. Earlier, Hamas was accused of cold-blooded executions, with footage of apparent victims flooding social media.

In other developments on Israel’s darkest day for decades:

Terrorists seized at least 50 Israeli hostages and took them into Gaza where they are being held in underground tunnels;

• Gunmen drove a captured elderly woman into Gaza on a golf cart;
• A video showed the body of a half-naked woman, said to be an Israeli soldier, being paraded through the Gaza Strip. Another revealed a dead man in military uniform slumped on the back of a truck. Elsewhere, according to reports, an army commander was taken hostage;
• A desert rave in Reim, near the Gaza border, was attacked, with dozens kidnapped and several killed;
• Israel said its forces were engaged in gunfights with Hamas terrorists in at least 20 locations;
• Last night there were reports of Hezbollah terrorists gathering at Israel’s border with Lebanon, with Israel Defence Forces troops firing at them. Intelligence sources said that Hezbollah was in full readiness for war, raising fears that the conflict could escalate even further;
• Rishi Sunak is expected to speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to tell him Britain is on stand-by to offer help and assistance at the soonest opportunity;
• Security at synagogues across Britain was ‘strengthened’;
• Hamas said hostages would be used to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners.

A ball of fire and smoke rise from an explosion on a Palestinian apartment tower following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City

Many Palestinians were left without electricity as they picked through rubble

A woman sobs at the site of a rocket explosion in Tel Aviv, Israel

People flee as clashes flare between Palestinian groups and Israeli forces in Gaza City following the earlier air strikes

Shocking footage shared on social media appears to show Palestinian fighters parading the naked body of an Israeli woman on the back of a pick-up truck

Hamas claimed to have fired 5,000 rockets into Israel from the occupied Gaza Strip, setting off air raid sirens in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem

World leaders have appealed for restraint, with US President Joe Biden warning Israel’s enemies not to take advantage of the situation.

Calling the attacks ‘unconscionable’, Mr Biden said last night: ‘Today the people of Israel came under an attack orchestrated by a terrorist organisation, Hamas.

‘In this moment of tragedy I want to say to them, and to the world, and to terrorists everywhere, the United States stands with Israel. We will not ever fail to have her back.’

Beginning at dawn yesterday, the rocket blizzard quickly overwhelmed Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system.

Mohammed Deif, the shadowy leader of Hamas’s military wing, said the assault was in response to the 16-year 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 the growth of settlements.

‘Enough is enough,’ Deif, who does not appear in public, said in the recorded message.

He revealed that the attack was only the start of what he called ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Storm’ and called on Palestinians from east Jerusalem to northern Israel to join the fight.

READ MORE: Who are Hamas? Everything you need to know about the Palestinian terror movement that has launched war on Israel

In response, Israel launched Operation Iron Swords. Among the bombing targets was the house of Hamas Gaza chief Yehya Al-Sinwar in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. Mr Netanyahu warned that ‘the enemy will pay a price he has never known’.

Fighting raged on the 50th anniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur War, when Israel was similarly caught napping by its neighbours.

Yesterday was the last day of another religious holiday, Sukkot. The invasion left many Israelis asking the same question: How could this happen?

Israel has the most well-funded intelligence service in the Middle East, with informants and agents inside Palestinian terror groups, yet failed to anticipate the attacks.

It has also built a massive fence along the Gaza border which is meant to prevent infiltrations.

The fence goes deep underground and is equipped with cameras, sensors and sensitive listening technology. Some experts have even suggested Hamas and other Palestinian groups could not have acted alone and suggested backing from hostile powers.

Yesterday’s dramatic events come against a background of hopeful speculation about the possibility of Saudi Arabia and Israel reaching an historic peace agreement, brokered by the Americans.

It was hailed as momentous – the end of hostilities between the Arab world and Jewish state. Then, from nowhere, came the new conflict.

Mr Netanyahu has told Israel that it is ‘at war’ with Hamas and has ordered a call-up of reservists.

The Israeli Prime Minister also ordered the military to clear the infiltrated towns of Hamas terrorists who remained locked in gunfights with Israeli soldiers.

Palestinians use an excavator to break through the border fence separating the occupied Gaza Strip from Israel

Ambulances transport people to hospital in Tel Aviv after the incursion on Saturday

Palestinian militants brandish weapons as they pass through Israeli territory on trucks

A rescue worker from the Magen David Adom disaster relief service looks on as cars burn at the site of a rocket attack in Ashkelon, southern Israel

An Israeli missile launched from the Iron Dome defence missile system attempts to intercept a rocket, fired from the Gaza Strip, over the city of Netivot in southern Israel

An injured Israeli soldier is brought into Tel Aviv’s Surasky Medical Centre following an attack by Palestinian militants on Saturday

People in Gaza assess damage after a barrage of Israeli airstrikes

A woman and child are evacuated from the site of a rocket attack in southern Israel on Saturday

Israeli forces have mounted strikes against targets in Gaza City following attacks today

Journalists take cover behind cars as Israeli soldiers take position during clashes with Palestinian fighters near the Gevim Kibbutz

Comparisons to the Yom Kippur War, one of the most traumatic moments in Israeli history, sharpened criticism of Mr Netanyahu and his far-Right allies, who had campaigned on more aggressive action against threats from Gaza.

Political commentators lambasted the Government over its failure to foresee what appeared to be a Hamas attack unseen in its level of planning and co-ordination.

The terror attacks come at a time of historic division within Israel over Mr Netanyahu’s proposal to overhaul the judiciary. Mass protests over the plan have sent hundreds of thousands of Israeli demonstrators on to the streets and prompted hundreds of reservists to avoid volunteer duty – turmoil that has raised fears over the military’s battlefield readiness.

Last night, millions of Israelis were hunkering down in safe rooms, sheltering from rocket explosions and ongoing gun-battles with Hamas terrorists.

Cities and towns emptied as the military closed roads near Gaza.

In the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, just two miles from the Gaza Strip, terrified residents who were huddled indoors said they could hear constant gunfire echoing off buildings as firefights continued hours after the initial attack.

Mirjam Reijnen, a 42-year-old mother of three, who lives in Nahal Oz, said: ‘With rockets we somehow feel safer, knowing that we have the Iron Dome and our safe rooms. But knowing that terrorists are walking around communities is a different kind of fear.’

Israel has blockaded Gaza since Islamist group Hamas gained control of the territory in 2007 and the two have fought wars ever since.

In Gaza, the roar of rocket launches could be heard last night and residents reported armed clashes along the separation fence with Israel.

‘We are afraid,’ Amal Abu Daqqa, said as she left her house in Khan Younis. Others expressed disbelief at the infiltration into Israel. ‘It is like a dream. I still can’t believe it,’ said one Gaza shopkeeper.

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