Palestinians, seen through a torn tent, ride a motorized vehicle past the rubble, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, September 16, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

On October 7, 2023, Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a highly coordinated attack on Israel, infiltrating cities, hitting military bases and killing and taking hostage soldiers and civilians. Israel responded with a devastating military campaign in the Gaza strip which has now left more than 41,000 dead, more than half of them women and children.

Also Read: What is Hamas, the Palestinian militant group?

During the attack, 1,205 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed, includes hostages who subsequently died or killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip. Hamas took 251 hostages back to Gaza, some as corpses, with the stated goal to force Israel to release Palestinian prisoners and detainees. A year later, some 64 are still detained, while 117 have been freed and 70 confirmed dead.

Vowing to destroy Hamas and bring back the hostages, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began bombing the Gaza strip and launched ground offensives with the Israeli Defence Forces leaving no spot untouched. The United Nations has estimated that nearly all of Gaza’s population of 2.4 million has been displaced.

Most of the internally displaced people, roughly two million, are living in make-shift camps in the south. According to the U.N., at the schools that shelter refugees, each toilet and shower are shared by hundreds of people. Diseases associated with poor sanitation are rampant. The U.N. has warned that a famine in the tiny strip of land with 2.3 million people is “imminent”.

The Axis of Resistance, a group of Iran-backed militia including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis, has also attacked Israel on multiple fronts, leading to the U.S. increasing its military presence to defend Israel.

Take a look at the timeline below to understand all the events that has occurred since October 7, 2023: