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People mark the third anniversary of the October 2023 attack on Israel at the Nova festival site Alamy Stock Photo
Palestine
As Israel marks the third anniversary of Hamas's 7 October attack, bombs continue to fall on Gaza
At the Kfar Aza kibbutz, mourners sat in silence as they watched the raising of an Israeli flag.
AS MOURNERS GATHERED to mark the third anniversary of the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attacks at dawn this morning, the sound of Israeli airstrikes could be heard hitting the Gaza Strip not far away.
Most people at the site of the Nova music festival massacre in the Negev Desert bowed their heads in silence, although at least one instead put on techno music in tribute to the people killed.
Both at Nova and the Kfar Aza kibbutz, another site of mass killings three years ago, reporters with the AFP news agency heard loud bangs from across the border in Gaza during the commemorations.
At a portrait of Yevgeni Postel, a 25-year-old student, his mother laid a bouquet of flowers and broke down sobbing.
“These are our heroes; the greatest children of Israel,” said one police officer as he looked at portraits of his fallen colleagues.
At the Kfar Aza kibbutz, mourners sat in silence in assembled chairs as they watched the raising of an Israeli flag.
On this day three years ago, Palestinian fighters breached the militarised Gaza border, storming southern Israel with gunfire, rockets and grenades.
A total of 1,221 people died and 251 hostages were taken into Gaza, 44 of them already dead.
My statement on the anniversary of the October 7th terrorist attacks: https://t.co/qSqyrU5oLV
— Helen McEntee TD (@HMcEntee) October 7, 2026
One of those kidnapped was Irish-Israeli Emily Hand, who was nine years old at the time.
She was released in November 2023 as part of a hostage exchange.
Kim Damti, a 22-year-old Irish-Israeli woman, was killed in the attack on the Nova festival.
Foreign Affairs Minister Helen McEntee said she was thinking of Emily and Kim today as she recalled “the horror and brutality” of the Hamas attacks.
In a statement, McEntee reiterated “Ireland’s unequivocal condemnation of Hamas and the despicable attacks it carried out”.
The last live hostages were freed a year ago as part of a US-brokered ceasefire deal that supposedly came into effect on 10 October.
Israel has continued to attack Gaza since then, killing more than 1,440 people.
Today in Gaza City, Al-Shifa Hospital reported two people killed in an Israeli strike overnight.
Gaza’s civil defence identified one of the dead as Mohamed Tamous and said he was a volunteer for the agency.
In response to the Hamas-led attack of October 2023, Israel launched a genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people in Gaza, where it has killed more than 74,200 people.
Election looms
Israelis will go to the polls on 27 October to vote in a general election, in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to retain power.
Netanyahu is facing renewed criticism of his government’s handling of the attacks and its actions in the weeks preceding them.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently reported that Netanyahu was warned of an impending Hamas attack by the United Arab Emirates in September 2023.
Other news outlets have reported that Egypt gave the Israeli government a similar warning three days before the attack.
Netanyahu, who has refused to sanction an independent investigation into the attacks, has rejected the reports as “completely false”.
While Netanyahu addressed a ceremony commemorating the victims of the attack yesterday, the father of one person killed that day shouted: “You didn’t protect my son and 1,200 others killed on 7 October – shame!”
With reporting from AFP
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