Israel Tackles Missiles From Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen As Families Of Hamas Hostages Mark A Painful October 7

A year after Hamas’ surprise cross-border attack, which killed about 1,200 people, caught Israel unprepared on a major Jewish holiday, shattering Israelis’ sense of security, nothing appeared to change as Palestinian militants, Hezbollah and Yemeni militants exchanged fire.

While commemorations were held across Israel and the world, to mourn those dead in the attacks and give hope to families of hostages pining to see the ones who have been held in Gaza, Hamas said the hostages are in a ‘very difficult’ situation.

The families of hostages, behind whom quickly went from a symbol of national resolve and unity to a symbol of the country’s pre-existing divides, an Israeli scholar, writing for the Conversation said.

Meanwhile, the war in Gaza and Lebanon continued unabated, even though the UN warned that the Israeli retaliatory war has turned the coastal enclave into a graveyard.

“Twelve months of unspeakable suffering for the hostages in Gaza, their families left in limbo and a society deeply traumatised,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the United Nations UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said on X, adding the war had also reduced Gaza to an “unrecognisable sea of rubble and a graveyard for tens of thousands of people”.

More than 41,909 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip since the war began, according to data provided by the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The United Nations has acknowledged these figures as reliable.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and its foe Israel have been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire for nearly a year in fallout from the Gaza war.

But since September 23, Israel has launched devastating air strikes on targets in Lebanon that have killed more than 1,110 people and forced more than one million to flee their homes.

Here Are The Latest Updates From The Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah War:

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel was fighting a “war of resurrection” and would continue until achieving its goals, as Israelis marked the anniversary of the Hamas attack.
• It provoked a response from a group representing the families of the hostages held in Gaza, who said they wished to “remind the prime minister that there is and will be no resurrection without the return of all the hostages.”
• Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel’s third largest city Haifa early on Monday as Israeli forces looked poised to expand ground incursions into southern Lebanon on the first anniversary of the Gaza war, which has spread conflict across the Middle East. Iran-backed Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group fighting Israel in Gaza, said it targeted a military base south of Haifa with “Fadi 1” missiles and launched another strike on Tiberias, 65 km (40 miles) away.
• The Israeli military said the air force was carrying out extensive bombings of Hezbollah targets in south Lebanon, and that two Israeli soldiers were killed in border-area combat, taking the military death toll inside Lebanon so far to 11.
• Israel’s military also said air defences intercepted a missile fired from Yemen during the anniversary of the October 7 attacks.
• It also added that Hezbollah had fired some 135 projectiles into Israel, as the country marked the first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack.
• Palestinian militants in Gaza fired a barrage of rockets into Israel as mourners marked the anniversary of the attack, but it failed to disrupt a nearby ceremony.
• Western leaders expressed support for Israel and mourned victims of October 7 while also urging for ceasefire and peace to prevail.
• Two Palestinians including a 12-year-old boy were killed in separate Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank on Monday, the Palestinian health ministry said.
• The US Treasury on Monday sanctioned three people in Europe, a charity group and a bank in Gaza, all accused of helping to bankroll Hamas.
• Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant is to travel to Washington this week for talks at the Pentagon.
• The Vatican marked the anniversary of the attacks by taking up a collection for the people of Gaza and publishing a letter from Pope Francis to Catholics in the region, expressing his solidarity.
• Families lit candles and observed a moment of silence at a memorial service in southern Israel to mark the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Monday, as the sounds of helicopters and artillery fire echoed from nearby Gaza.
• Hamas’s armed wing vowed on Monday, the anniversary of the militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel, to keep fighting what it described as a “long war of attrition“.
• Waving Hamas flags and carrying portraits of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, hundreds rallied in support of the Palestinian struggle in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah Monday, the first anniversary of Hamas’s attack on Israel.
• An Israeli campaign group announced the death of another hostage held in Gaza. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said Idan Shtivi, 28, was abducted from the site of the Nova music festival and his “body is still held captive by Hamas”.
• The United Nations says 92 percent of Gaza’s roads and more than 84 percent of its health facilities have been damaged or destroyed in the war. Gaza City was barely recognisable, ravaged by relentless air strikes and fighting. Residents walked along sand-covered streets stripped of pavements, with buildings either destroyed or left without facades, while piles of rubble littered the roads.