October 8, 2023 Israel-Hamas war news

Israeli warplanes continued striking Gaza on Sunday morning as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) evacuated Israeli residents around the Gaza Strip overnight.

Israeli forces struck 426 targets in Gaza, including 10 towers used by Hamas, the IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said in a briefing on Sunday.

Tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers are operating on the ground around the Gaza Strip, Hagari added.

A CNN journalist in Gaza said Al Watan building and Al Aklouk building in the center of Gaza City were struck.

Internet connectivity continues being partially disrupted and most of the electricity has been cut off since Saturday.

The sound of warplanes and explosions continued throughout the night and the smell of gunpowder filled the air, the CNN journalist in Gaza said.

The IDF shared footage showing a strike on a multi-story building in the city.

The strike hit “Hamas military targets located in multi-story buildings in the Gaza Strip,” the IDF said.

An unconscious woman taken hostage by Gaza militants attacking an Israeli music festival was seen being paraded around the coastal enclave in new video authenticated and geolocated by CNN.

CNN has confirmed the identity of the woman as Shani Louk, a German-Israeli dual national. CNN has reached out to her family for comment but has not yet received a response.

Her cousin confirmed to The Washington Post that Louk attended the Nova Festival, an all night dance party celebrating the Israeli harvest festival Sukkoth near Re'im, Israel.

Louk is seen motionless in the video. 

One gunman, carrying a rocket propelled grenade, has his leg draped over her waist; the other holds a clump of her dreadlocks. "Allahu Akbar," they cheer – "God is Great," in Arabic.

Some of the crowd gathered around the truck, just outside of the Al-Shalfoh bakery and grocery store, join in the cheers. One man spits on Louk's head as the car drives off.

CNN does not know Louk's whereabouts, or condition, at this time. CNN is not airing the video because it is graphic and disturbing.

“We recognized her by the tattoos, and she has long dreadlocks,” Louk's cousin told The Washington Post.

A German foreign ministry source told CNN that, “The Federal Foreign Office and the German embassy in Tel Aviv are in close contact with the Israeli authorities in order to clarify whether and to what extent German citizens are affected.”

In video obtained by German news outlet Bild, Louk's mother Ricarda spoke directly about the abduction.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were still fighting to clear Hamas fighters inside the country early Sunday morning.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an IDF spokesman, told CNN's Jake Tapper “many hundreds”, possibly as many as 1,000 Hamas fighters were involved in Saturday’s surprise attacks.

As of 4:15 a.m. local time Sunday morning, Conricus said: "We are still fighting, clearing the last houses and locations and communities and bases.”

“Then we will lock down the border and make sure that there are no other terrorists coming in," he added. "And then we shall start to focus on hitting Hamas like we have never hit Hamas before.”

Israel's political-security cabinet convened late on Saturday to determine the country's response to the surprise attack by Hamas.

The cabinet made a "series of operational decisions aimed at bringing about the destruction of the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and Islamic Jihad," according to a statement from the office of Israel's Prime Minister. 

"The first phase ends at these hours by the destruction of the majority of the enemy forces that penetrated our territory. At the same time, we started the offensive formation, and it will continue without reservation and without respite until the objectives are achieved," Netanyahu said. 

Israel aims to "negate [Hamas's] ability and desire to threaten and harm the citizens of Israel for many years to come," according to the statement.

"We will restore security to the citizens of Israel and we will win," Netanyahu added. "Among the decisions made by the cabinet are the stopping of the supply of electricity, fuel and goods."

Correction: This post has been updated to correct a reference to the Israeli political-security cabinet’s aim to degrade the capabilities of Hamas and other organizations in Gaza

The US could announce new assistance to Israel as soon as Sunday, a US official said, as the Biden administration works to bolster its Middle East ally in the wake of Saturday's unprecedented attack by Hamas.

At the same time, the current dysfunction in Congress remains an open question for American officials as they work to provide Israel what it needs. Without a sitting House Speaker, administration officials are unclear about what can be accomplished. 

Top American and Israeli officials have been working throughout the day to identify where Washington can be of assistance as Israel prepares to respond to the attack, including at the Pentagon, State Department and the White House.

“We are in deep discussions with the Israelis about some of their particular needs as they respond to this,” a senior US administration official said Saturday.

The official said “we might have more to say about it as early as tomorrow.”

When Biden spoke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier Saturday, the President reinforced the US would provide Israel what it needed to defend itself, though not at a level of specificity to include particular weapons or hardware.

Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians have existed since before the nation’s founding in 1948. Thousands of people on both sides have been killed and many more injured in the long-simmering conflict between the two sides over the past few decades.

Violence has been particularly heightened this year. The number of Palestinians – militants and civilians – killed in the occupied West Bank by Israeli forces is at its highest in nearly two decades. The same is true of Israelis and foreigners – most of them civilians – killed in Palestinian attacks.

Israel and the militant group Hamas have been involved in armed conflict dating back as early as the 1987 First Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, against Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Israel captured Gaza from Egypt in a 1967 war, then withdrew in 2005. The small territory — home to some 2 million Palestinians — fell under Hamas’ control in 2007 after a brief civil war with Fatah, a rival Palestinian faction which is the backbone of the Palestinian Authority.

After Hamas seized control of Gaza, Israel and Egypt imposed a strict siege on the territory, which is ongoing. Israel also maintains an air and naval blockade on Gaza.

Before Saturday’s operation, the last war between Hamas and Israel was in 2021, which lasted for 11 days and killed at least 250 people in Gaza and 13 in Israel.

Saturday’s assault occurred on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 war, when Israel’s Arab neighbors launched a surprise attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, on October 6, 1973.

Hamas is an Islamist organization with a military wing that came into being in 1987, emerging out of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist group that was founded in the late 1920s in Egypt.

The word “Hamas” is itself an acronym for “Harakat Al-Muqawama Al-Islamia” – Arabic for Islamic Resistance Movement.

The group, like most Palestinian factions and political parties, insists that Israel is an occupying power and that it is trying to liberate the Palestinian territories. It considers Israel an illegitimate state.

Its refusal to recognize Israel is one reason why it has rejected peace talks in the past. In 1993, it opposed the Oslo Accords, a peace pact between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

The group presents itself as an alternative to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has recognized Israel and has engaged in multiple failed peace initiatives with it. The PA is today led by Mahmoud Abbas and is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Hamas, meanwhile, controls the Gaza Strip, an enclave that is home to some 2 million Palestinians and is frequently the site of civilian casualties when fighting flares between militants and Israeli forces.

Hamas has over the years claimed many attacks on Israel and has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel. Israel accuses its archenemy Iran of backing Hamas.

The Gaza militant attacks that have left at least 200 people dead and hundreds injured are unprecedented, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Saturday.

"Israel will reach every place Hamas is hiding," Netanyahu said, referring to the militant group behind the attacks. "I tell Gaza's people to leave those places now."

He also referred to the Israeli soldiers and civilians taken hostage by Hamas fighters.

"I tell Hamas, you are responsible for wellbeing of captives. Israel will settle the score with anyone who harms them," the prime minister said, according to Reuters.

The gunmen came from air, sea and land. They shot at civilians, took hostages and forced families to barricade themselves indoors, fearing for their lives.

A day that began with air raid sirens blaring out in the early morning had by lunchtime turned into one of the most terrifying attacks Israel has known in the 75 years of its existence. Assailants from Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls the impoverished and densely populated Gaza Strip, had by nightfall killed hundreds of people and wounded hundreds more.

An attack with no warning: Though Israel is no stranger to terrorist attacks, Saturday’s assault was unprecedented – not least because of the lack of warning. Israel’s military on Saturday found itself caught off-guard, despite decades in which the country became a technology powerhouse that boasts one of the world’s most impressive armed forces and a premier intelligence agency.

The questions for Israeli authorities are legion. It has been more than 17 years since an Israeli soldier was taken as a prisoner of war in an assault on Israeli territory. And Israel has not seen this kind of infiltration of military bases, towns and kibbutzim since town-by-town fighting in the 1948 war of independence. How could a terror group from one of the world’s poorest enclaves manage to launch such a devastating attack?

A system failure: “The entire system failed. It’s not just one component. It’s the entire defense architecture that evidently failed to provide the necessary defense for Israeli civilians,” said Jonathan Conricus, a former international spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces.

Heavy investment in defense: Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it has spent billions of dollars securing the border from attacks. That has included striking at any weapons fired from Gaza into Israel, and stopping terrorists from trying to cross the border by air or underground using tunnels. To stop rocket attacks, Israel has used the Iron Dome, an effective rocket defense system developed with help from the United States.

Israel also spent hundreds of millions of dollars building a smart border system with sensors and subterranean walls that was, according to Reuters, completed at the end of 2021.

So far, officials have said little: Israeli authorities will almost certainly look at where its systems failed on Saturday, but the country has not yet released figures on how many of the more than 2,000 rockets fired by Hamas militants were intercepted. Nor have officials commented on if the border fence did its job. And the Israeli military has repeatedly dodged questions about whether Saturday’s events constitute an intelligence failure.

Military spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told CNN that Israel was focused on the current fight and protecting civilian lives.

“We’ll talk about what happened intelligence-wise after,” Hecht said.

Read more about Israel's security measures here.