[29][30] Hamas militants breached the Gaza–Israel barrier, attacking military bases and massacring civilians in 21 communities, including Be'eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Netiv Haasara, and Alumim.

[78] On September 29, Qatar, the UN, and Egypt mediated an agreement between Israeli and Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip to reopen closed crossing points and deescalate tensions;[81] the total number of Gazans with work permits in Israel stood at 17,000.

[95][full citation needed][96] Western and Middle Eastern security officials gathered evidence suggesting that Hamas intended to invade as far as the West Bank, had the initial attack been more successful.

The National Resistance Brigades, the armed wing of the Maoist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), confirmed their participation in the operation through their military spokesman Abu Khaled,[107] saying it had lost three fighters in combat with the IDF.

[195] Subsequently, armed militants, dressed in military attire and using motorcycles, trucks and powered paragliders, surrounded the festival grounds and indiscriminately fired on people attempting to escape.

Inbal Rabin-Lieberman, the 25-year-old security coordinator, alongside her uncle Ami, led a guard detail that killed multiple militants attempting to infiltrate a nearby chicken farm.

[259][260] Segal condemned the "weaponizations of Holocaust memory" by Biden, Israeli politicians and others, saying it is done "not in order to stand with powerless people facing the prospect of genocidal violence, but to support and justify an extremely violent attack by a powerful state and, at the same time, distort this reality.

[274] The Druze deputy commander of the 300th "Baram" Regional Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Alim Abdallah, was killed in action along with two other soldiers while responding to an infiltration from southern Lebanon on October 9.

Several weeks after the massacre, once conventional search techniques had been exhausted, the IDF approached the Israel Nature and Parks Authority for help in tracking the flight paths of vultures, which resulted in the discovery of at least five more bodies.

This included archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority, who identified and removed ancient remains in attempts to sift through ash and rubble for bone fragments other forensic teams overlooked.

[309] A two-month New York Times investigation by Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz, and Adam Sella, Screams Without Words, released in late December 2023, reported finding at least seven locations where sexual assaults and mutilations of Israeli women and girls were carried out.

Patten also reported receiving "clear and convincing information" that some of the hostages held by Hamas had suffered rape and sexualized torture and that there were "reasonable grounds" to believe such abuses were "ongoing".

[318] The UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released an in-depth investigative report on June 12, 2024, which found that both Hamas and Israel had committed sexual violence and torture, along with intentional attacks on civilians.

[320][129] The commission was unable to independently verify testimony of genital mutilation, sexual torture and rape, citing a lack of access to witnesses and crime scenes, and Israel's obstruction of its investigations.

[129] In June 2024 The Times published a detailed investigative report concluding that Israel's claims about the scale and the formally sanctioned, systematic nature of sexual assaults did not stand up to scrutiny.

[336] Israeli security agencies released videos that the Times of Israel described as alleged confessions of Hamas attackers, in which the subjects said they were ordered to kill, behead, cut off limbs and rape.

An Israeli army officer claimed that babies had been hung on clotheslines; later investigations showed that exactly one infant was killed, alongside her father, and that the reports of groups of children being slaughtered and mutilated were false.

In its investigation Le Monde concluded that the unverified claim is false, although it became a significant element in the information wwar, with ISraeli authorities intentionally maintaining ambiguous messaging that helped spread the narrative despite lack of confirmation: "Israel has done nothing to fight it and has more often tried to instrumentalize it than deny it, fueling accusations of media manipulation."

The issue continues to be sensitive, with pro-Palestinian influencers and conspiracists seeing it as "fake news" spread by a "genocidal army of occupation", while on the Israeli side questioning it is likened to Holocaust denial.

[49] Israel's Security Cabinet voted to undertake a series of actions to bring about the "destruction of the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad", according to a statement by the Prime Minister's Office.

[32][33] In January 2024, an investigation by Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth concluded that the IDF had in practice applied the Hannibal Directive, ordering all combat units to stop "at all costs" any attempt by Hamas militants to return to Gaza, even if there were hostages with them.

[380] Khalil al-Hayya, a senior member of Hamas, said the action was necessary to "change the entire equation and not just have a clash... We succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region is experiencing calm.

"[382] He emphasized Hamas's willingness to "pay a price", concluding with a call for the elimination of Israel: "We must remove that country because it constitutes a security, military and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nations".

[384] Its official announcement referring to the event rejected the "falsehood of the fabricated allegations" promoted by some Western media outlets, which unprofessionally adopt the "Zionist narrative full of lies and slander against our Palestinian people and their resistance, the latest of which was the claim of killing children, beheading them, and targeting civilians".

[384] When asked about the Re'im music festival massacre, where 260 civilians were murdered, Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzook replied that it was a "coincidence", and that the attackers may have thought these were soldiers "resting".

[385][386] In January 2024, Hamas released a report titled "Our Narrative", which accepted "some faults" but continued to deny having intentionally targeted civilians, blamed Israel for deaths, and justified the attacks as "a necessary step and a normal response to confront all Israeli conspiracies against the Palestinian people".

[117] Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the country was facing "a very difficult moment", and offered strength and encouragement to the IDF, other security forces, rescue services, and residents who were under attack.

Israel has claimed the interrogation of suspects revealed significant insights into the group's strategies, ideologies, and operational methods that played a crucial role in its military response and in shaping the global understanding of the conflict.

In contrast, Arab and Muslim countries including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria, Iran and Iraq blamed Israel's policy of occupying the Palestinians for the attack.

"[316] The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill to amend the US immigration code and ban people associated with Hamas, PIJ, and other perpetrators of the October 7 attacks from seeking immigration-related relief or protections in the United States.