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Militants fired on Israel from multiple fronts as the country marked the first anniversary of Hamas’s deadly October 7 attack, which triggered a devastating war in Gaza in a conflict that threatens to destabilise the entire region.
In the year since, the fighting has spread across the Middle East, with Israeli forces exchanging fire with militants in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, launching a ferocious bombing campaign and ground offensive in Lebanon and on the verge of a broader conflict with Iran.
Minutes after the commemorations in Israel began at 6.29am on Monday — the time Hamas launched its surprise attack a year ago — militants in Gaza fired four rockets at Israel, sending participants at a vigil in Kfar Aza, one of the kibbutzim attacked last year, into shelters.
Hamas also launched five missiles that set off sirens in Tel Aviv, while the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah shot about 135 rockets at Israel’s north, according to Israel’s military. On Monday evening, militants in Yemen fired a surface-to-surface missile that was intercepted by Israel’s air defences.
Meanwhile, Israel bombed targets across Gaza and launched heavy strikes against Hizbollah in southern Lebanon. Later on Monday, the Israeli military hit Beirut’s southern suburbs and warned civilians it was preparing to “operate in the maritime area against Hizbollah”.
Israeli paramedics said two people had been injured in the attacks, while Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli air strike on a municipal building in the Bint Jbeil region had killed 10 firefighters.
Despite the barrages, vigils marking the anniversary of last year’s Hamas attack were held across Israel. At the site of the Nova music festival, one of the centres of the militant group’s onslaught, Israeli President Isaac Herzog laid a wreath at a ceremony that began with the final song played at the party last year.
“This is a scar on humanity,” he said. “This is a scar on the face of the earth.”
Hamas’s October 7 attack was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, with its militants killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and taking a further 250 hostage.
More than 100 people are still being held in Gaza, although Israeli officials have said not all are believed to be alive.
Relatives of hostages holding pictures of their loved ones gathered on Monday outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Jerusalem, where they held a minute’s silence.
In response to Hamas’s attack last year, Israel launched a massive assault on Gaza that has killed almost 42,000 people, according to Palestinian officials, displaced most of its 2.3mn inhabitants and fuelled a humanitarian catastrophe.
On Monday, Israel issued new evacuation orders for areas in the north of the enclave, telling residents to head south after its forces launched a fresh offensive in Jabalia on Sunday, bombarding and encircling the neighbourhood, with officials saying Hamas was regrouping there.
Despite the uptick in fighting in Gaza in recent weeks, Israel has increasingly focused its forces on its border with Lebanon, where it has been trading fire with Hizbollah since the militant group began launching rockets at Israel in support of Hamas last October.
Last week, Israel began a ground offensive against Hizbollah following a devastating bombing campaign that has decimated the group’s chain of command — including killing its leader Hassan Nasrallah — left more than 1,300 people dead and displaced hundreds of thousands.
Overnight, Israeli forces bombed more targets in Beirut, following a round of strikes on Sunday that data from Acled, which has been mapping the attacks, suggested was the most intense night in Israel’s two-week air campaign.
In an indication that Israel was stepping up its ground offensive in Lebanon, the Israeli military on Monday said soldiers from a third division — the 91st — had joined the fighting.
It also issued a warning to people not to visit Lebanon’s beaches or use boats at any points south of the Awali river, which lies some 60km from the border with Israel and above the major southern city of Saida, saying it was preparing to operate in the area.
The spiralling hostilities have also drawn in Iran, which last week launched 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in a barrage that it said was a response to Nasrallah’s assassination and the killing of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.
Netanyahu has vowed retaliation for the missile attack, and Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday said the response would come “in the manner of our choosing, at the time and place of our choosing”.
Cartography by Chris Campbell and Steven Bernard
