Israelis mourn October 7 attack as Palestinians in Gaza live in ruins of war

Israelis gathered Wednesday to commemorate the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people, saw 251 taken hostage and sparked a devastating war in Gaza that has left much of the territory in ruins.

In southern Israel, families mourned at intersections, bomb shelters and the site of a music festival that the militants overran three years ago in the deadliest attack in the country's history. It is the first anniversary since all the hostages, living and dead, were returned, marking a new stage of grief.

For Palestinians, the anniversary brings another day of misery after as Israel's war in Gaza killed at least 74,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Several international NGOs as well as a UN commission have found that Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Most Gaza residents live in vast, squalid tent camps, with large parts of the strip’s cities reduced to rubble. More than half the territory remains in the hands of the Israeli military. Despite a ceasefire deal reached nearly a year ago, Israeli strikes continue almost daily.

For the region, the day highlights a startling transformation over the past three years.

Israeli troops occupy a large chunk of southern Lebanon in their conflict with the Hezbollah militant group, which began firing on Israel in 2023 in support of Hamas. Iran and the United States are locked in a confrontation that has seen attacks across Gulf Arab countries and has shaken the global economy — a conflict that Israel helped launch and that the Gaza war paved the way for, even if they weren’t directly connected.

Families mourn at the Nova Festival site

Near the town of Reim, where the music festival was underway when militants attacked, families gathered around photos of their killed relatives. Hundreds of people paid their respects to the more than 350 people killed in and around the festival site. Videos from that day showed militants gunning down fleeing revelers, shooting the wounded at point-blank range and ambushing those seeking refuge in nearby bomb shelters.

On Wednesday, survivors' relatives hugged at 6:29 a.m. — the exact time the first rockets were launched three years ago — as explosions boomed in nearby Gaza.

Anya Davitashili, who lost her 25-year-old son, Sean, said she visits the site every Saturday. It’s where she feels closest to him.

“I have a video of him dancing here that ends at 6:29 in the morning, it’s in front of my eyes all the time,” she said. “Every morning, you wake up and there is just endless missing.”

A released hostage marks his first October 7

Elkana Bohbot, 37, is marking the anniversary in Israel for the first time since his release after 738 days of captivity. For most of that time, he said, he was held underground in a dark, damp tunnel.

Bohbot, who was abducted from the festival, was kept in a small cell with other hostages, given little food and allowed to bathe only every few weeks, he said. His captors forced him to take part in propaganda videos, including one where he acts out a fake call to his family.

In the year since his release, Bohbot has undergone physical and emotional rehabilitation. In August, his wife, Rivka, gave birth to a daughter, fulfilling his promise to himself in the tunnels to give his 5-year-old son, Reem, a sibling.

The newborn Michele is “not a symbol for my people, she is more of a symbol for the enemy,” Bohbot told The Associated Press. “This child is the message for you that we were here and we will always be here forever.”

Palestinians in Gaza live surrounded by ruins

No events are expected Wednesday in Gaza, but Hamas in a statement praised the October 7 attack as an example of “heroism, resilience and national solidarity” and said it had returned the Palestinian cause to the world’s attention.

“The conflict with the enemy did not begin on that day, as its final chapters are not written yet,” it said.

Palestinians in the territory said the extent to which their lives had deteriorated over the past three years was previously unimaginable.

“We witnessed death, destruction, and bombardment that we had never known before,” said Walid Akram, a Gaza City resident who, like most in Gaza, has been displaced by the war.

Raed Khozeiq’s coastal neighborhood in Tel al-Hawa was largely flattened. Nothing about his life now is the same, he said.

“No country in the world has gone through what we have experienced here,” he said. “A war of extermination, starvation, the absence of schools and universities — nothing remains.”

More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory's Health Ministry.

Since the ceasefire that took effet on October 10, 2025, Israeli strikes have killed 1,460 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the ministry. Seven Israeli soldiers have been killed in that period. Restrictions on the entry of goods and aid have contributed to a hunger crisis, food security experts say.