Palestinian fighters breached the Gaza border in at least five places on Saturday in the deadliest incursion into Israel in decades, and appeared to catch Israeli soldiers by surprise in dawn assaults on fortified installations, according to videos verified by The Washington Post.
The videos, released by Hamas on social media, showed militants using explosives and other means to breach Israel’s border fence with Gaza, then driving and jogging, sometimes for several miles, to attack weakly guarded military posts and towns, where they killed and captured Israeli soldiers and civilians.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the assault, which began while Israel was observing a religious holiday that falls the day after the festival of Sukkot. The groups also launched more than 3,000 rockets, the Israel Defense Forces said. At least 700 people in Israel were killed and thousands wounded, Israeli media said on Sunday.
End of carouselThe videos verified by The Post showed scores of fighters breaching the border with little opposition, armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. They poured into Israel on the ground, flew in with fan-driven paragliders and used commercial drones to attack Israeli military targets, including tanks and communications infrastructure.
One video shows fighters from Hamas’s armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, using explosives against a section of border wall near the Erez crossing, the only one available for Gazans to travel into Israel, located at the northern end of the Gaza Strip. The video shows at least seven gunmen running toward the crossing, moving through a security checkpoint and firing at a guard tower.
In the video, a fighter shoots a bloodied body on the ground in a hallway as he catches up with a group of other militants, who appear to be capturing two men clothed in only shorts and T-shirts. Later in the video, as the fighters clear hallways and living quarters, several other bodies can be seen on the ground. It was not clear from their clothing if they were in the military.
Another video filmed at sunrise shows fighters on foot and motorcycles passing through an opening made in the border fence near Kerem Shalom, a kibbutz on Israel’s southern border with Egypt near a major border crossing of the same name. The video then cuts to the fighters storming a military outpost about three miles to the north.
Israeli military vehicles including armored personnel carriers and a tank can be seen, as well as the bodies of several Israeli soldiers, including one wearing only boxer briefs, a helmet and a tactical vest.
In one room containing bunk beds, the video shows the bodies of several men, some in military fatigues and others in shorts and T-shirts, including one still lying in bed.
Four other videos verified by The Post show fighters breaching the border fence in two locations near the towns of Nahal Oz and Be’eri.
End of carouselOnce the fighters reached Be’eri, nearly three miles from the Gaza border, other videos, including one posted on X (formerly Twitter) showed them dragging at least five people away. Two appear to be older and thinly dressed, and all are barefoot, with their hands tied behind them.
Israeli and Hamas officials both confirmed that Israeli military personnel and civilians were taken captive across southern Israel during the assault, though the total number and their condition is unknown. A spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing said there were “tens” of soldiers and officers in the group’s custody, a Reuters journalist in Gaza reported. The Israeli Embassy in the United States posted on X that there were 100 “kidnapped civilians and soldiers.”
The Post also verified videos taken in Gaza showing militants transporting what appeared to be dead or seriously wounded Israelis, including at least one member of the armed forces.
In Nahal Oz, less than a mile from where fighters breached the border fence, they stormed a military base and used a commercial drone to drop an explosive on Israeli soldiers standing near an ambulance. The videos from the base showed fighters taking female prisoners.
Fighters also destroyed and captured Israeli military vehicles, some of which were driven back into Gaza. The Post verified footage taken several miles inside northern Gaza showing Palestinians celebrating near an Israeli jeep.
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Palestinian fighters also managed to reach Sderot, a town of about 30,000 people roughly three miles from the Erez crossing in north Gaza. Images from Sderot showed more than a half-dozen civilians bloodied and slumped around a bus stop in the city, and videos showed armed men in a pickup truck firing at an Israeli police vehicle.
The Saturday assault took place under the cover of a large rocket barrage that began at about 6:30 a.m. and was aimed at cities across Israel. The Post verified footage taken in the aftermath of several reported strikes, including in Tel Aviv and the southern city of Netivot. A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces said the “overwhelming majority” of Israeli casualties resulted from close-contact shooting, not rockets.
Palestinian health authorities said at least 413 people in the Gaza Strip had been killed and 2,300 wounded in retaliatory Israeli strikes.
Gaza was plunged into darkness on Saturday evening after Israel cut off its electricity and launched waves of airstrikes into the enclave. The Israeli air force hit what it described as 17 military compounds and four operational command centers belonging to Hamas. Footage taken Saturday showed the destruction of a 14-story residential building in Gaza City known as the Palestine Tower.
Overnight, airstrikes continued to pound the territory.
Imogen Piper in London, Jarrett Ley in New York and Bryan Pietsch and Sarah Cahlan in Washington contributed to this report.
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