HOW DOES AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL SUMMARIZE THE ATTACKS OF 7 OCTOBER 2023?
In the morning of 7 October 2023, shortly after indiscriminately firing a barrage of rockets into Israel, Hamas fighters and members of other Palestinian armed groups breached the border fence surrounding the occupied Gaza Strip (Gaza) and entered southern Israel from multiple locations. Armed with heavy machine guns, rifles, hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons, they attacked civilian and military targets, carrying out deliberate mass killings, summary killings and other abuses, causing suffering and physical injuries. They destroyed civilian property by burning houses, making them uninhabitable and causing the internal displacement of civilians. They took scores of hostages.
Later that day, Mohammed Al-Masri (known as Mohammed Deif), the head of Hamas’s military wing, the Izz al-Din Al- Qassam Brigades, announced that the armed group had launched “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” to end Israel’s military occupation and “its crimes”.2 As a result of the attacks on 7 October 2023, as well as the indiscriminate rocket and mortar fire that continued intensively until November 2023, areas in Israel close to the border fence between Israel and Gaza were evacuated; tens of thousands of Israeli residents were displaced.3 Only some were subsequently able to return home.
While the attacks of 7 October 2023 were seemingly planned, organized and led by Hamas’s military wing, other Palestinian armed groups also participated in the assaults. Video footage and images of the attacks, descriptions of assailants by survivors and witnesses, as well as statements from some of the armed groups themselves, indicate the participation of members of the following armed groups: the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad; the National Resistance Brigades or Omar Al-Qasem Forces, the military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine; the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, formerly the military wing of the Fatah political movement.