Israel ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip on Monday as it retaliated for the largest and deadliest incursion into its territory in decades, while Hamas threatened to respond to the Israeli bombing campaign by executing civilians its fighters took hostage in Israel.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of Israel said that “no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” would be allowed into Gaza, the crowded and impoverished coastal territory that is already under a 16-year blockade by Israel and Egypt. Israeli warplanes struck hundreds of sites in Gaza, which is controlled by the militant group Hamas, including mosques and a marketplace, while Israeli troops battled to regain control of towns overrun on Saturday by Hamas gunmen.
More than 900 people have been killed in Israel, the IsraelDefense Forces said. More than 2,600 have been wounded since the incursion began early Saturday, and Hamas gunmen were holding about 150 hostages, the Israeli government said. The spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, Abu Obeida, said the group would execute a civilian hostage every time an airstrike hit Gazans “in their homes without warning.”
At least 687 Palestinians were killed and at least 3,726 injured, the authorities in Gaza said. The death toll is believed to include not only the casualties in Gaza, but also some of the assailants who were killed in the attack on Israel, though it was not immediately clear how many.
Israel mobilized 300,000 military reservists, an enormous number for a country of 9 million people, amid signs that it could be preparing for a major ground invasion of Gaza and the possible opening of another front against the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah in the north.
In a televised address on Monday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who has warned of a long war ahead, vowed to “eliminate” Hamas. Mr. Netanyahu, who leads the most right-wing government in his nation’s history, called on the opposition to “immediately establish a national emergency government without preconditions.”
Lt. Col. Richard Hecht of the Israel Defense Forces told reporters on Monday that the next phase of fighting would not resemble recent conflicts with Gaza, in which Palestinian groups fired rockets but claimed relatively few casualties, and Israel would respond primarily with airstrikes. “We are in a different game here,” he said. “We are at war with Hamas.”
A stunned disbelief enveloped Israel, which appeared to have been caught entirely by surprise by the attack and had gone 50 years without enduring an assault on this scale or with so many casualties. Adding to the shock were the mass hostage-takings and the fact that fighting on Israeli soil continued into a third day. Families were watching men and women who had finished their mandatory military service being called back to duty, while the names of the dead scrolled across television screens.
An Israeli airstrike on Monday devastated a busy open-air marketplace in northern Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, where Gazans anticipating a long fight had flocked to stock up on food and other supplies. A Red Crescent paramedic, who was not authorized to speak to the media and requested anonymity, said 60 people were killed there.
Videos shared on social media and distributed by Palestinian news agencies showed bodies strewn amid the debris of what moments earlier had been stands selling produce and other goods. Broken concrete and twisted metal from the surrounding buildings filled the square, and people made their way through the debris, smoke and dust, looking for survivors.
“Is he dead? Is he dead?” a man was heard yelling in one video.
Israeli strikes also hit four mosques in the Shati refugee camp on Monday, according to Gaza authorities, toppling their domes and killing worshipers inside. Neighbors picked through the rubble of the Sousi mosque, where witnesses said boys had been playing soccer just outside when it was destroyed.
Israeli strikes hit several mosques in the Shati refugee camp on Monday, including the Sousi mosque.Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
Israel’s military said it had carried out more than 500 airstrikes overnight, targeting operations centers of Hamas and another group, Islamic Jihad. It confirmed hitting several mosques, saying that they contained Hamas infrastructure or fighters.
The United Nations and Palestinian officials said that at least two hospitals and multiple homes had also been hit, and many Gazans said they had nowhere to go to escape the Israeli strikes.
President Biden said at least 11 U.S. citizens were confirmed killed in the Hamas attack, and an unknown number were unaccounted for. “While we are still working to confirm, we believe it is likely that American citizens may be among those being held by Hamas,” he said in a written statement.
He vowed to work with Israel “on every aspect of the hostage crisis,” including sharing intelligence and deploying experts.
Mr. Biden and the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy also released a statement late Monday condemning “Hamas and its appalling acts of terrorism.”
Many other foreign nationals were reported dead, wounded or missing, including 12 Thais killed, 11 kidnapped and nine wounded, according to their government. France said two of its nationals were killed and 14 were unaccounted for.
Israel has asked the United States to supply it with more precision-guided munitions for its warplanes and more missiles for its Iron Dome air defense system, requests the Biden administration is working on, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. A senior Pentagon official said the United States was already accelerating shipments of such weapons.
More than 100 people were killed over the weekend in a Hamas assault on an Israeli kibbutz, Be’eri, said Moti Bukjin, a spokesman for the ZAKA relief organization, which was recovering bodies there on Monday. “It was horrible work. There were killed children there,” he said, adding that there were dozens of dead militants in the town as well.
At least 109 people were killed by gunmen who swarmed into a weekend music festival at a venue in Israel three miles from the Gaza border on Saturday. But ZAKA volunteers later reported recovering an estimated 260 bodies at the site of the rave, Mr. Bukjin said. Videos show panicked concertgoers fleeing south into the desert and more than 100 abandoned vehicles on the side of the road.
An image taken from social media showing the aftermath of the attack on an Israeli music festival near the border with Gaza on Saturday.Credit...South First Responders
Hamas’s armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, said four Israelis were killed in one of the Israeli airstrikes, along with the Palestinian gunmen who were holding them captive, a claim that could not be independently verified.
A new barrage of rockets fired into Israel from Gaza injured seven people on Monday, officials said, while sirens blared in Jerusalem and across central Israel. Schools remained closed and flights in and out of the country were curtailed.
Israeli leaders are concerned that Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia allied with Iran, could enter the fight, and Israeli military units in the north are on high alert. Israel and Hezbollah fought a monthlong war in 2006.
Fighting escalated on Monday on that front, along Israel’s northern frontier with Lebanon, with Islamic Jihad claiming responsibility for small cross-border attacks there, a day after Hezbollah fired on Israeli posts and Israeli forces fired back. Israel’s military said on Monday that it had struck three Hezbollah posts in Lebanon, and Hezbollah said that three of its fighters had been killed. The group later said it had carried out attacks on two Israeli military barracks, using guided missiles and mortars.
It was not clear what prompted the timing of the most audacious attack Hamas has ever launched on Israel. Hamas is backed by Iran, as is Islamic Jihad, and Tehran is eager to derail a possible diplomatic deal between its two regional archenemies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Iranian foreign ministry denied that its government had any role in the fighting. U.S. officials said that no evidence had emerged so far of Iranian involvement, but that Iran was complicit in the attack, given its years of support for Hamas.
Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, declared on Monday that the army had regained control of border communities, though “there may still be terrorists in the area.” But a short time later the military said soldiers and armed militants were exchanging gunfire in Kfar Azza, an Israeli village near the border.
Colonel Hecht said in a news briefing on Monday that Israeli special forces troops were trying to dislodge militants from a civilian area.
“We thought by this morning we’d be in a better place,” he said.
Israeli rescue workers were still extracting the bodies of civilians who were killed in their homes by Hamas gunmen on Saturday.
Israel has mobilized 300,000 military reservists, an enormous number for a country of 9 million people.Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
Mr. Netanyahu warned local leaders in southern Israel to prepare for a long fight, his office said.
“I know you have been through tough and terrible things. What Hamas will go through will be tough and terrible,” he told them, according to his office. “We are already in the midst of a battle that has only just begun.”
The United Nations humanitarian agency said Israeli strikes had displaced 123,000 Gazans, and damaged water, sanitation and hygiene facilities affecting more than 400,000 people. The only power plant providing electricity to Gaza could run out of fuel in a few days, aid agencies have said.
In the north, Israel’s Home Front Command instructed the residents of 28 towns and villages near the border with Lebanon to go to bomb shelters and other protected spaces. The residents were told to take food, water, mattresses, and blankets, signaling that they may need to stay there for a while.
The Lebanese Army said Israeli planes and artillery struck near the towns of Dhayra and Aita al Shaab close to the border with Israel earlier on Monday. The military instructed Lebanese civilians “not to go to areas adjacent to the border for the sake of their safety.”
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, Aaron Boxerman from London and Hiba Yazbek from Nazareth, Israel. Reporting was contributed by Raja Abdulrahim, Ameera Harouda, Edward Wong, Farnaz Fassihi, Peter Baker, Cassandra Vinograd, Ronen Bergman, Sui-Lee Wee, Eric Schmitt, Euan Ward and Tiffany May.
The Israeli Defense Forces confirmed late Monday that a deputy army commander had been killed during clashes along the Lebanese border. It did not provide further details. Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s military wing, Al Quds Brigades, which said it was responsible for the cross-border attack on Monday, earlier claimed that several Israeli soldiers had been wounded in the assault.
On Monday night, the White House displayed the blue and white colors of the Israeli flag to express solidarity.
Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesCredit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesVideoSocial media videos and closed-circuit TV footage verified by The New York Times reveal how armed men stormed a music festival in southern Israel, killing an estimated 260 people.
Videos posted on social media and closed-circuit TV footage verified by The New York Times reveal how armed attackers stormed a music festival in southern Israel, killing an estimated 260 people.
Minutes after a rocket alarm sounded in the midst of a D.J. set, gunmen fired on people attempting to evacuate the area through the festival’s main road exit. Concertgoers were forced to flee through fields and the surrounding countryside, where many hid for hours. Some of the hostages taken over the weekend were abducted from the festival. Israeli forces recaptured the area later in the day.
The United States still has no evidence that Iran was directly involved in planning or executing Hamas’ attacks inside Israel, John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, told reporters in a briefing on Monday night. Kirby said he could not confirm a story in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday that cited unnamed members of Hamas as saying there were meetings with Iranian officials to plan the attacks.
President Biden issued a statement on Monday evening confirming 11 American deaths in Israel and acknowledging the possibility that others could be hostages.Credit...Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times
At least 11 U.S. citizens have been killed in Israel and an unknown number are still unaccounted for, President Biden said in a statement on Monday evening, saying that “we believe it is likely that American citizens may be among those being held by Hamas.”
“I have directed my team to work with their Israeli counterparts on every aspect of the hostage crisis, including sharing intelligence and deploying experts from across the United States government to consult with and advise Israeli counterparts on hostage recovery efforts,” Mr. Biden said, while expressing anguish over the suffering of Israelis from “inexcusable hatred and violence.”
“This is not some distant tragedy,” Mr. Biden said in the statement. “The ties between Israel and the United States run deep. It is personal for so many American families who are feeling the pain of this attack as well as the scars inflicted through millennia of antisemitism and persecution of Jewish people.”
He noted that police departments across the United States “have stepped up security around centers of Jewish life, and the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other federal law enforcement partners are closely monitoring for any domestic threats” in connection with the attacks in Israel.
A number of Americans who had been visiting Israel during the attack, including two lawmakers — Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Rep. Dan Goldman of New York — were able to leave the country over the weekend. Mr. Biden directed Americans trying to leave Israel to seek out remaining “commercial flights and ground options” and urged all American citizens in Israel to “please also take sensible precautions in the days ahead and follow the guidance of local authorities.”
Mr. Biden spoke with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in a call on Sunday, in which they discussed the hostages taken by Hamas, as well as what military assistance the United States could provide. The Pentagon announced the same day that it was sending additional munitions to Israel and moving more Navy warships, including an aircraft carrier, and combat aircraft closer to Israel in a show of support. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the United States was working to fulfill several specific requests from Israel for military assistance, without providing details.
On Monday, Defense Department officials said the Pentagon had offered the assistance of U.S. Special Operations forces for planning and surveillance in any hostage recovery efforts. A White House spokesman also clarified that the U.S. government was not sure that American were being held. “We can’t confirm that they are, in fact, holding hostages,” John Kirby, the spokesman, told reporters. There are, he said, Americans who are unaccounted for and may be captive.
In the statement on Monday, Mr. Biden evoked the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, lamenting the deaths of more Americans in an extremist attack.
“We remember the pain of being attacked by terrorists at home, and Americans across the country stand united against these evil acts that have once more claimed innocent American lives,” Mr. Biden said. “It is an outrage.”
The White House will be lit up in the blue and white colors of the Israeli flag on Monday night to express solidarity with Israel. It will be the latest landmark around the world to be so illuminated, joining the Empire State Building in New York, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and the Sydney Opera House in Australia, among others.
Eric Schmitt and Peter Baker contributed reporting.
The White House will be lit up in the blue and white colors of the Israeli flag on Monday night to express solidarity with Israel. It will be the latest landmark around the world to be so illuminated, joining the Empire State Building in New York, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and the Sydney Opera House in Australia, among others.
The White House released a joint statement from President Biden along with the leaders of the U.K., Germany, France and Italy expressing steadfast support for Israel and issuing an “unequivocal condemnation of Hamas and its appalling acts of terrorism.” It also called for parties “hostile to Israel” not to exploit the attacks.
The funeral of an Israeli soldier, Yuval Ben Yaakov, at a cemetery in Kfar Menahem on Monday.Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
Eden Atias, an Israeli who lives in New York, spent much of Saturday worrying about her friends and loved ones back home in Israel, numb and resigned to what she considered inevitable — that someone she knew, or that they knew, had been taken hostage or killed during the Palestinian incursion.
In the early afternoon, her phone pinged, with a message from her music producer, Gidon Ricardo. His niece, Oriya Ricardo, was missing after attending a music festival near the border with Gaza. A man she was with had been shot and killed. A friend of Oriya’s had vanished, too.
In a country with a population of about 9.4 million, the proximity to conflict is intimate. Many, if not most, Israelis are one person removed from someone who was kidnapped, someone who was recalled to serve in the military, someone who was killed.
“We are all connected,” said Alex Farfuri, a photojournalist based in Tel Aviv. “Wherever you go in Israel, in any place, you find someone in common.”
In a society in which most Jewish 18-year-olds are drafted for mandatory service and many volunteers continue to serve in reserve duty, the impact has rippled across Israel. About 800 Israelis have been killed, 2,400 have been wounded and an estimated 150 have been taken hostage by Palestinian assailants. The Israeli military has now called up 300,000 members of its reserve force.
On Saturday, Ms. Farfuri shared images and videos of soldiers riding scooters through empty streets in their uniforms and parents dropping off children before heading to bases. The next day, the streets remained empty save for meeting points where civilians — religious and secular, those from the right and left of the political spectrum — gathered together to organize supplies for soldiers and donate blood.
“I know that I know nothing of the horror that is to about to come, the people I am going to be losing,” Ms. Farfuri said through tears. “Faces next to numbers next to stories. I’m just terrified about what’s going to be next.”
The full scale of the violence remains unfathomableand personalall at once. A former classmate killed in Sderot. A cousin’s cousin who was kidnapped from a kibbutz. The neighbor’s young boys who were sent to war. A colleague who lost four of their best friends in the south.
Ms. Atias was relieved to learn that much of her family was safe in Haifa, in the country’s north, and in Beersheba, east of Gaza, in the Negev Desert. But she has barely slept, she said, the last three nights. She has been having nightmares.
“I literally dreamed that Hamas kidnapped me,” Ms. Atias said.
Israelis desperately seeking news of loved ones crowded a makeshift office at Ben Gurion airport, outside Tel Aviv, on Monday, where the military and the police have opened a joint center for families to register missing relatives.
The authorities asked relatives to bring photos of the missing and items from which they can gather DNA samples.
Avraham Tadessa arrived on Monday with his parents to file a missing persons report for his sister, Edna, a mother of three working as a therapist at a special needs center in Okafim, Israel, located about 30 miles from the border with Gaza. She had told her husband on Saturday morning that she was almost at work, and has not been heard from since.
“We are hopeful, but we feel she was taken,” Mr. Tadessa said, as his parents stood silently nearby.
Or Yamin, a volunteer from the nearby town of Lod, wordlessly handed cups of water to the elderly couple. Mr. Tadessa’s father thanked her by placing his arm over his heart.
The makeshift center usually functions as a bustling business center and meeting place, but police and military officials turned tables and chairs that would normally be packed at lunchtime into interview groupings, with the occasional soldier or social worker coming in for fresh air or a coffee.
Gal Shaham, 52, heads up the team of 25 social workers tasked with collecting the names and the DNA of the missing.
“You can spot the families who come here to report about a missing person from a distance,” he said, “Their body language, their nervousness, the fear in their eyes. And you can feel their helplessness.”
Though he was not authorized to give an exact number, Mr. Shaham said he had helped dozens of families, friends and other relatives of missing persons and missing soldiers, asking them where their loved ones were headed and when they were last heard from. This information is being distributed to the police, the Israeli Defense Forces and other support organizations on the ground.
“Some were inside the communities that were attacked, some were on their way to work, some were in the army and others at the party,” Mr. Shaham said, referring to a music festival near Gaza that was attacked on Saturday. “Everyone who was at the wrong time in the wrong place has people looking for him.”
Halfway though a sentence, Mr. Shaham’s attention was drawn to two women approaching the edge of the parking area leading to the entrance to the building.
“We were just talking about being able to spot the lost expressions of the people coming to report about their relatives — these two women need my attention,” he said.
He walked toward them, briefly introduced himself and gestured to them to follow him inside.
Former President Donald J. Trump at a campaign event in Wolfeboro, N.H., on Monday. Mr. Trump suggested his administration’s travel ban kept “radical Islamic terrorists” out of the United States.Credit...Sophie Park for The New York Times
Former President Donald J. Trump, while addressing the fighting in Israel on Monday, attempted to stoke fear of attacks taking place on U.S. soil and suggested that a travel ban like the one he implemented as president could stop such violence.
Mr. Trump’s comments, at a campaign rally in Wolfeboro, N.H., echoed the anti-Muslim rhetoric that he successfully tapped during his 2016 presidential run, harnessing sentiments that have lingered in the post-9/11 era.
While discussing a series of surprise attacks launched over the weekend by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, Mr. Trump promised to “stand strongly with the state of Israel” and said, to cheers, said that he had “imposed a strict travel ban to keep radical Islamic terrorists” out of the United States.
He called to “reimpose the travel ban on terror-afflicted countries.”
“The bloodshed and killing that we saw this week will never, ever be allowed to happen on American soil,” he said. “Except for the fact that we have now allowed tens of thousands of probable terrorists into our country.”
He claimed, without evidence, that the “same people that attacked Israel” are entering the United States through its southern border, a similar message asserted by at least two other Republican presidential candidates — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Vivek Ramaswamy — over the weekend.
During his 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States.
The order that his administration imposed shortly after taking office in 2017 banned travel into the United States for people from seven countries, most of them predominantly Muslim, though the order went through several iterations that changed the final list of countries. Iran, one of the affected countries, has funded Hamas.
Mr. Trump earlier revived discussions of a travel ban in July, saying in Iowa that he would impose a travel ban “even bigger than before.”
President Biden said that “at least 11 American citizens were among those killed” and that an unknown number of others remain unaccounted for. In a written statement, he said the safety of Americans “is my top priority as president,” and he vowed to work with Israel “on every aspect of the hostage crisis,” including sharing intelligence and deploying experts.
In his statement, Biden alluded to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “In this moment of heartbreak, the American people stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israelis,” he said. “We remember the pain of being attacked by terrorists at home, and Americans across the country stand united against these evil acts that have once more claimed innocent American lives.”
Sarit Kurtzman and her 14-month-old daughter in a safe room in the kibbutz Alumim in southern Israel on Saturday.Credit...Yonatan Kurtzman
When Sarit Kurtzman heard rocket sirens early Saturday morning, she grabbed her 14-month-old daughter, Zohar, and quickly made her way with her husband, Yonatan, to the safe room in their home in the kibbutz Alumim in southern Israel.
As a resident of a kibbutz only a few miles from the Gaza Strip, it was an experience she has grown accustomed to. Ms. Kurtzman, a modern Orthodox Jew, typically leaves her phone off on Saturdays but turned it on when she realized something was wrong. The barrage of rockets and sirens continued for longer than usual.
“We’re used to hearing the missiles, we’re used to hearing the Iron Dome, we’re used to hearing even planes and tanks and helicopters, but this was the first time we heard gunshots right outside our window and we understood that something is going on — that the terrorists are nearby,” Ms. Kurtzman, 28, said.
Her kibbutz, which has a volunteer security team and several methods of communicating warnings, alerted residents that the community had been infiltrated by attackers and that residents needed to seek shelter.
“We were just on our phones the whole entire time trying to calm down my baby without food, without water, without diapers,” she said. She shared her live location on her phone with her family.
To calm her daughter, she made toys out of random items in the safe room, including a wallet. “I cut it open so she could put stuff in it and take out,” Ms. Kurtzman said, adding, “mostly she was just amazing.”
“Thank God she’s young enough to not understand what’s going on.”
At one point, Ms. Kurtzman decided to exit the safe room to grab water, food, diapers and a knife. “I ran out knowing that I might be meeting a terrorist at my fridge, but I felt like I needed to feed my daughter,” she said.
As the fighting continued outside, thoughts of the family’s future stayed top of mind.
“I looked at my husband and I said to him like, ‘Where are we going to live? Is this place going to exist? Are we going to want to put our daughter in this situation?’” she said.
Altogether, they spent 26 hours in the safe room before receiving a notification that it was safe to exit.
Outside, Ms. Kurtzman took in the alarming aftermath: the community’s barn had been burned down, and in the streets, cars riddled with bullets had been flipped over.
Her sister, Adena Lesnick-Weil, who was in Jerusalem, described the terror of not being able to help her sister.
“It’s 26 hours, but when you’re a family member, it was centuries, it was years,” she said, adding, “I just needed her to get out of there.”
Ms. Kurtzman’s husband has been drafted, and she says she would typically be as well, but that her new role as a mother has altered the calculation for her.
“It’s the first time that something like this has happened, and I’m a mother, and I’m torn,” she said. “I feel guilty that it’s not obvious for me that I have to be a mother right now.”
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