Israel–Hamas War Live Updates: Hundreds of Hamas Terrorists Killed

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By Epoch Times Staff - 10/8/2023

Israel announced on Saturday that it is "at war" after Hamas, the terrorist group that controls the Gaza Strip, launched a surprise attack against the country from the air, land, and sea. Here are the latest updates on the conflict.

Hundreds of Hamas Terrorists Killed: Israeli OfficialAn Israeli military official says “hundreds of terrorists” have been killed and dozens captured in fighting with Hamas terrorists in Gaza and southern Israel.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari spoke to reporters on Sunday, more than 24 hours after the Hamas launched an unprecedented assault into Israel, killing hundreds of people, firing thousands of rockets, and taking captives back into blockaded Gaza.

Israel is battling terrorists in the south and launching airstrikes across Gaza that have leveled buildings.

At Least 26 Israeli Soldiers Die in Hamas AttackAt least 26 Israeli soldiers have been killed in an attack by Hamas on the country’s south, Israel’s military said Sunday. The figure is part of a death toll of more than 250 people in the deadliest attack against Israelis in decades.

Romania Repatriates Citizens Romania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says that 346 Romanian citizens and other foreigners were repatriated from Israel overnight on two separate flights.

The ministry said Sunday that a mobile consular team was sent to Ben Gurion Airport from the Romanian Embassy in Tel Aviv and Romania’s representative office in Ramallah to provide consular assistance.

Israel Air Strikes Hit Gaza After Hamas Launches Surprise Attack

  • On Saturday, the ministry “strongly condemned” Hamas’s rocket attacks against Israel, “including against the civilian population, terrorist infiltrations and hostage-taking.” It said Israel has a sovereign right to defend itself.

Reservists CalledIDF Chief Spokesman Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari said on Sunday morning that the military will be calling up hundreds of thousands of reservists as Israeli forces make preliminary plans for ground troops to enter Gaza to thoroughly clear out Hamas's armed forces and military infrastructure following the deadly Saturday attack by the Islamist terrorists on Israel.

Mr. Hagari said that the IDF on Sunday would be focused on completely securing and retaking control of all of the 22 villages and 29 entry points breached by Hamas and Islamic Jihad a day earlier.

He added that there were no more known active hostage situations in Israeli homes, although searches for terrorists hiding in the invaded areas are ongoing. The IDF has reported killing over 400 terrorists, wounding thousands, and capturing dozens. Meanwhile, over 300 Israelis have died, with close to 1,800 wounded and dozens captured.

Israel Strikes Hamas Intelligence BuildingThe IDF announced Sunday morning that its fighter jets struck a building belonging to the head of the intelligence department for the Hamas terrorist organization. The airstrikes are part of its "Operation Swords of Iron."

The IDF is currently continuing to strike terror targets in the Gaza Strip," the group added in its announcement at 9:08 a.m. Sunday local time. So far, the IDF has conducted 500 targeted airstrikes on Hamas and Islamic Jihad locations, including command centers, hiding tunnels, and 10 large buildings.

Israel Strikes Lebanon After Hezbollah Attacks Israel fired barrages of artillery into southern Lebanon on Sunday after Hezbollah targeted three Israeli military positions in the disputed Mount Dov region, also referred to as Shebaa Farms.

The Israeli military stated on Sunday that it retaliated with artillery strikes in Lebanon following cross-border mortar attacks. "IDF (Israel Defense Forces) artillery is currently striking the area in Lebanon from where a shooting was carried out," the IDF said.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Israel has held the Mount Dov region since 1967. It is a 15-square-mile (39-square-km) patch of land that both Syria and Lebanon claim are Lebanese. Hezbollah, which effectively controls southern Lebanon, claimed it was in "direct contact" with the leaders of Palestinian groups. It added that it saw Palestinian attacks on Israel as a "decisive response to Israel's continued occupation and a message to those seeking normalization with Israel."

Hezbollah Says Rockets and Mortars Fired at IsraelThe Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group said in a statement on Sunday morning that it fired dozens of rockets and mortars at Israel "in solidarity" with Hamas's surprise attack on Israel.

The attack used "large numbers of rockets and shells" that directly hit three Israeli positions in the contested Mount Dov region, the terrorist group said, adding it did so in solidarity with the "Palestinian resistance."

The IDF said it responded with artillery strikes as well as a drone strike. It did not report any Israeli injuries from Hezbollah's strike. Meanwhile, there have been no immediate reports on Lebanese casualties.

'Leave Now,' Israeli PM Tells Palestinians in Gaza-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is urging Palestinian civilians in Hamas-controlled locations in the Gaza Strip to leave immediately, in the hopes that they will vacate before the Israeli military ups their response to the Islamist terrorist group's latest bloody offensive against Israel and its citizens."I say to the residents of Gaza: Leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere.,"

Mr. Netanyahu said of Hamas hiding places in Gaza, according to a statement posted on X around 4:25 a.m. Sunday local time from Tel Aviv."This morning, on Shabbat and a holiday, Hamas invaded Israeli territory and murdered innocent citizens including children and the elderly. Hamas has started a brutal and evil war," he said in his message on X, updating the world about the war acts leveled at Israel's citizens by the terrorists.

Saturday was the culmination of the week-long Torah-commanded harvest festival, Sukkot, for the Jewish people.

IDF Shares Plan of ActionIDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus in his live briefing on X late Saturday shared the priorities of the Israeli military in the immediate days and weeks to come.

Its first priority is to restore the situation in the south of Israel to ensure safety to the Israeli communities there, Lt. Col. Conricus said. Thereafter, the IDF plans to obtain "a full and comprehensive tally of the numbers of Israelis," and account for all civilians and soldiers, including establishing their locations.

The second priority is "to make sure the border is closed and that future attacks are prevented and that Hamas won't have any other opportunities to attack Israel," he said.

"Third, and that's already ongoing, we will start to strike Hamas's military targets in Gaza. And that's the stage when we start responding to Hamas aggression and attacks," he added.

Situation 'Still Not Fully Under Control': Israeli Military" This is a very sad day in Israel," IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said in an update live-streamed on X late Saturday, in which he said that the situation is "still not fully under control," with fighting to continue in southern Israel.

"There are still Hamas terrorists inside Israel," Lt. Col. Conricus said, adding that Israeli special forces and IDF troops are continuing to fight, going house to house to clear communities of terrorists. He estimated that Israeli forces had managed to kill over 200 Hamas operatives.

Calling the Hamas attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers "barbaric," Lt. Col. Conricus said that the loss of civilian life has been unprecedented.

While he cited the same 200-plus death toll figure that the IDF announced earlier in the day, Lt. Col. Conricus said that this "number will unfortunately rise."

The number of Hamas terrorists who crossed into Israel from Gaza to perpetrate their attacks was in the "high hundreds," he said, adding that they attacked dozens of Israeli communities and military bases.

"They went door to door, house to house, in search of Israeli civilians, executed in cold blood Israeli civilians in their homes," he said.

The terrorists then kidnapped and dragged into Gaza both soldiers and civilians, including women and children.

"I am sad to say that we have a significant number of Israelis held by Hamas in Gaza," he said, calling the number "unimaginable," though he did not provide a specific estimate as to how many.

The sheer number of abductions, he said, along with the known casualty count, would "shape and influence the future of this war against Israel and it will shape the future of what we're doing against Hamas."

The Tel Aviv skyline, seen in the background of the video, was quiet. Earlier in the day, there were barrages of Hamas rocket strikes streaking through the sky. The IDF spokesperson predicted that more strikes would come during the night.

He said there had been heavy barrages of missile attacks targeting central and southern Israel throughout the day.

"More than 3,000 rockets have been fired at Israel, aimed at Israeli civilians, and unfortunately they have claimed a heavy toll in human life and in human life in Israel," he said. Hamas claimed to have fired 5,000 rockets when it claimed responsibility for the attack.

Lt. Col. Conricus said that the IDF would be focusing its efforts on striking Hamas targets inside Gaza in order to degrade the terror group's ability to perpetrate further attacks.

"This is going to be a long and difficult war," he said.

Live briefing from Tel Aviv—with an IDF Spokesperson LTC (Res.) Jonathan Conricus https://t.co/nOU4IDlsQx October 7, 2023Mimi Nguyen Ly, Melanie Sun, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Victor Davis Hanson: A 50th Anniversary War?

BY TYLER DURDEN -Victor Davis Hanson - OCT 07, 2023

A 50th Anniversary War?

Why did Hamas stage a long-planned, carefully executed, and multifaceted attack on Israeli towns, soldiers, and civilians - one designed to instill terror by executing noncombatants, taking hostages, and desecrating the bodies of the dead?

And how were the killers able to enter Israeli proper in enough numbers to kill what could be hundreds and perhaps eventually wound what could be thousands?

a) Ostensibly, radical Palestinians wanted to stop any rumored rapprochement between the Gulf monarchies - the traditional source of much of their cash—and Israel, by forcing the issue of Arab solidarity in times of “war”, especially through waging a gruesome attack aimed at civilians and encompassing executions and hostage taking. Iran likely was the driving force to prompt the war—given its greatest fear is a Sunni Arab-Israeli rapprochement.

b)  Arab forces have had only success against Israel through surprise attacks during Israeli holidays, as in the Yom Kippur War (i.e., was it any accident that the present attack began 50-years almost to the day after the October 6, 1973 beginning of the Yom Kippur War?). And so they struck again this Saturday during Simchat Torah, coming at the end of a weeklong Jewish celebration of Sukkot—in hopes that others will join in as happened in 1973. (So much for the Arab warnings not for Westerners to conduct war during Ramadan).



c) Hamas may have reckoned that recent Israeli turmoil and mass leftist street protests over proposed reforms of the Israeli Supreme Court had led to permanent internal divisions and thus a climate of domestic distraction if not an erosion of deterrence.

But, more importantly, in a larger sense, the Biden administration has contributed both to the notion that Hamas was a legitimate Middle East player and to the perception that the U.S. was backing away from its traditional support for Israel - to the delight of Hamas - based on the following inexplicable policies:

1) In February Secretary of State Blinken had bragged that not only had the Biden administration resumed massive aid to the PLA cancelled by Trump, but cumulatively had transferred $1 billion - even as Palestinian authorities bragged that they would continue to pay bounties to the families of “martyrs” (i.e., those killed while conducting terrorists attacks against Israel).

And millions of American dollars also went into Gaza, run by Hamas - despite the Biden administration’s efforts to keep mostly quiet the resumption of such inexplicable support. In this regard, note the current shameful State-Department (“U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs”) website news release that was posted after today’s attack. It ended with this quite embarrassing, morally equivalent admonition:

“We urged all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks. Terror and violence solve nothing.”

"All sides?" "Refrain from retaliatory attacks?”

So Israel is the moral equivalent of terrorists executing civilians and brutalizing their corpses? And the IDF then is not supposed to retaliate against these killers?

This Biden State Department insanity cannot stand. So expect some apparatchik to take down this Munich-like posting as soon as possible.

2) The Biden administration had recently released some $6 billion to Iran through a prison swap deal that saw South Korea hand over embargoed Iranian money to Qatar - despite Tehran’s  increased anti-Israeli rhetoric and its loud brag about the escalation. We should assume money for rockets (Hamas claims they have launched 5,000, and have received 100,000 of them via the Damascus airport) and weapons in general for Hamas were supplied by Iran, which again is likely the chief catalyst for this surprise attack.

3) Almost immediately, after his inauguration Biden mobilized to resume the bankrupt Iran deal. And in unhinged fashion he appointed the anti-Israeli bigot, pro-Iranian journalist Robert Malley as America’s chief negotiator. Note that Malley is now under FBI investigation for security breaches, involving disclosing classified U.S. documents and also for allegedly helping pro-Iranian activists and propagandists land influential billets inside the U.S. government.

In short, there was a general Hamas and Iranian perception that the Biden administration had resumed the discredited Obama madness of empowering Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. This discredited agenda was to “balance” the power of Israel and the moderate Arab Gulf governments to achieve “creative tension”, exacerbated by Biden’s loathing of the government of Benjamín Netanyahu (who has been snubbed by Biden and never invited for an official visit).

Note as well that the Biden administration has siphoned off key weapons and munitions from stockpiles inside Israel to transfer them to Ukraine. The so-called “War Reserve Ammunition—Israel" is all but depleted of just the sorts of weapons needed in the present crisis.

In this regard is there not a pattern here?

Upon the ascension of Biden and his woke military agendas, we saw the following:

  • the complete humiliation of the U.S. in Kabul in its most shameful flight in 50 years and the greatest abandonment of equipment in its history;
  • followed by Vladimir Putin’s opportunistic invasion of Ukraine;
  • followed by China’s new belligerence and escalating threats to Taiwan;
  • followed by Turkey’s new de facto alliance with Russia and a recent drone encounter with the U.S. air force in Syria;
  • followed by the Hamas/Iranian-inspired attack on Israel - with more to come, unfortunately.

And will Biden finally get the message from the attacks on the Ukraine and Israeli borders, that borders matter and we too are being invaded, with the encouragement of the Mexican government and to the advantage of the cartels whose fentanyl exports kill 100,000 Americans a year?

What to expect in Israel?

Expect the following:

  • the usual Hamas/terrorist selling and/or execution of Israeli hostages,
  • the use of Israeli hostages as “human shields” in Gaza,
  • the bargaining/sale of the remains of Israeli dead,
  • occasional killings of Jews inside Israel by Arabs who falsely believe there will be a winning Middle East-wide existential war against Israel.
  • And finally, a devastating Israeli counter-response that will eventually earn a U.S. rebuke.

What should the U.S. instead do?

It should quit talking to Iran and restore full sanctions against it.

It should cut off all aid immediately to all the Palestinians.

It should undertake a 1973-like massive arms lift of key munitions to Israel and warn Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and others in the Middle East not to intervene or else, given that Israel will need several weeks to deal with Hamas and Gaza.

And if it shows any hesitation or weakness, other terrorist groups will opportunistically jump in.

Editor comment.

I think the plan of the US/Khazarian Mob is to make Israelis escape the war and settle in Ukraine which already has a large population of Jews. Remember the Khazarians are NOT Jews, just Semi-Jews.