Israel at War: What We Know about the Barbaric Hamas Attacks

On the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel in what is shaping up to be the most audacious and brutal attack on Israel in its history. The attacks started overnight Saturday and have already claimed dozens of Israeli lives and caused hundreds of injuries that we know about.

While details of the horrific assault are still emerging and the full scope of the attack is not fully known, what we know so far is that:

Thousands of Hamas rockets bombarded Israel, overnight, hitting southern Israeli towns and stretching into central Israel, up past Tel Aviv.

Hamas used bulldozers and other means to breach security barriers in the southern border, allowing large numbers of terrorists to infiltrate.

Terrorists took over southern Israeli towns, going house to house, gunning down unarmed civilians in front of children, and taking hostages. The Times of Israel has this eyewitness account from a resident of the border town of Sderot: “We woke up at 6:30 a.m. to alarms, we thought it was the usual rocket attacks but we started hearing gunshots on the street, sounded like it came from the parking of our building. Then we realized something was unusual. We then started seeing Hamas people in pickup trucks. They knocked on the homes of residents, who thought they were Israeli soldiers. They took them hostage.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “Citizens of Israel, we are at war. Not an operation, not a round [of fighting], at war! This morning Hamas initiated a murderous surprise attack against the state of Israel and its citizens.” He went on to say, “I am initiating an extensive mobilization of the reserves to fight back on a scale and intensity that the enemy has so far not experienced. The enemy will pay an unprecedented price.”

Some of the images and video emerging of the unfolding series of massacres are too graphic to share. But here are some videos providing an idea of what is going on:

Here is one of cheering and shouts of “Allahu Akbar” as Hamas terrorists unload an Israeli woman hostage:

Here is another video of hostages:

This is a building in the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon hit by rocket fire:

Here are Palestinians cheering as Hamas terrorists parade dead Israeli bodies back in Gaza: