Smoke and flames rise after Israeli forces smash a tall tower in Gaza City (Reuters)
Sderot:
Bloodied bodies in the streets, armed men looting from door to door and news of prisoners being taken to Gaza left Israelis terrified and shocked after the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a surprise attack unprecedented in its audacity and scale .
A resident reported seeing several bodies and bullet-covered vehicles in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, where groups of Hamas gunmen were still fighting Israeli forces 12 hours after the attack.
“I went outside and saw a lot of bodies of terrorists, civilians and shot down cars. A sea of bodies, in Sderot along the road, in other places, a lot of bodies,” said Shlomi from Sderot.
As night fell, at least 100 deaths and more than 1,000 injuries were reported, according to Israeli media, with fighting still raging in more than 20 locations across the Gaza Strip.
The attack, on the Jewish Sabbath and coinciding with the religious holiday Simchat Torah, is unfolding as a major national trauma in a country that prides itself on its strong military.
In one incident, young Israelis said they fled a dance party in the early hours of Saturday as Hamas gunmen, backed by rocket attacks, entered towns and villages along the border.
The rave party was attended by several hundred people near the Israeli kibbutz of Reim, witnesses said. Footage on social media showed dozens of people running through fields and along a road, fleeing militants when gunshots were heard.
“The music stopped and a rocket siren sounded,” a young woman named Ortal told Israeli television channel N12 News. “Suddenly out of nowhere they started shooting.”
Another partygoer, Esther Borochov, said a car rammed her vehicle as she tried to flee before a young man told her and her friend to jump into his vehicle before being shot outright as she appeared dead until she was rescued.
“I couldn’t move my legs,” she told Reuters at the hospital. “Soldiers came and took us into the bushes.”
Israel’s ambulance service said its crews were unable to reach wounded people in towns where fighting took place. An ambulance was also attacked, Magen David Adom Medical Services said, and one crew member was killed, the medical service said.
The attacks on Israeli civilians were the deadliest since the Palestinian suicide bombings during the Second Intifada, which hit the country’s main cities about 20 years ago.
Adding to the shock, Palestinian militant groups circulated images on social media showing captured Israeli soldiers and civilians being driven into Gaza and hostages being held by increasing numbers of fighters in Israel.
Israeli TV stations relayed telephone conversations from terrified residents of towns and kibbutzim, even as armed men tried to break into their shelters.
A woman, identified as Ella, barricaded for hours in a bomb shelter in Kibbutz Be’eri, where there were reports of fifty Israelis being taken hostage by Hamas, spoke live to N12 News.
“We can hear a lot of gunshots, we’ve been told there are terrorists in the dining room, we can hear a lot of shooting,” she said. “I’ve lost contact with my family. I know my father has been kidnapped…no one is telling us what’s going on. I don’t know if my mother is still alive.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
