October 7, 2023: Hamas militants storm the border from Gaza to Israel, in what would be the deadliest attack in the country’s history. At the end of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the militants launched attacks on land, air, and sea. Militants kidnapped 251 hostages on October 7, 97 of whom are still being held captive in Gaza, including 33 dead Israeli soldiers.
Shortly after the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced “We are at war.” He announced mass army mobilization. “There is no ‘operation’, not ’round’, but in war.” Israel attacked Gaza on October 8 after suffering its bloodiest attacks in decades, when Hamas fighters stormed Israeli towns killing 600 and kidnapping dozens more, as the ongoing violence threatened a new war in West Asia. Israeli airstrikes hit residential blocks, tunnels, mosques and homes of Hamas officials in Gaza, killing more than 370 people, including 20 children, as Mr Netanyahu vowed “strong revenge for this black day”.
October 27, 2023: Internet and telephone services collapse in the Gaza Strip due to intensive bombing, mostly cutting off 2.3 million people from outside and from each other, as the Israeli military “expands” ground operations in the besieged territory. The military’s announcement signaled a move closer to an invasion of Gaza, where it has vowed to crush the ruling Hamas group after a bloody attack in southern Israel three weeks ago. This screen grab was taken from handout footage released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2023, showing a “targeted attack” in northern Gaza by tanks and infantry.
November 2023: Israeli forces attack a number of hospitals in Gaza City as the military pushes deeper into densely populated neighborhoods in a battle with Hamas militants, prompting an increase in civilians to flee to the south of the besieged territory. Israel has accused Hamas fighters of hiding in hospitals and using the Shifa Hospital complex as its main command center, which the militant group and hospital staff deny, saying Israel is creating a pretext to attack. In this photo dated Nov. 6, 2023, a man walks among the shrouded corpses of those killed in an Israeli bombardment in Deir Balah in the central Gaza Strip, at the Shuhada Al-Aqsa hospital in the same city.
November 24, 2023: After 48 days of gunfire and bombing that claimed thousands of lives, a four-day ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war begins. Palestinian prisoners (wearing gray jumpers) cheer after being released from the Ofer Israeli military facility in Baytunia in the occupied West Bank in exchange for hostages released by Hamas in Gaza, November 24, 2023.
February 29, 2024: Israeli forces in war-torn Gaza set fire to a Palestinian crowd at an aid distribution point on February 29, killing at least 104 people and injuring more than 700 according to Palestinian health officials. A witness told AFP that the violence broke out as thousands of people desperate for food rushed to aid trucks at the Nabulsi roundabout west of the city. This image is taken from a video handout released by the Israeli Army showing what the Army says are Gazans around an aid truck in Gaza City.
March 2024: The UN warns that Israel’s severe ban on aid to war-torn Gaza, coupled with military strikes may use hunger as a “weapon of war”, would amount to a “war crime”. The devastating war since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel has left about half of Gaza – around 1.1 million people – experiencing “catastrophic” hunger, estimates said. In this photo from October 2023, Palestinian children receive food at a UN-run school in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip.
March 2, 2024: A US military C-130 cargo plane drops food on pallets in Gaza. The airdrop is the first of many to be announced by President Joe Biden in the. The aid is coordinated with Jordan, which has also carried out airdrops to deliver food to Gaza. Since the war began on October 7, Israel has banned the entry of food, water, medicine and other supplies, except for aid entering the south from Egypt at the Rafah crossing and Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing.
April 2, 2024: An Israeli airstrike kills six international aid workers with the World Central Kitchen charity and a Palestinian driver, hours after bringing fresh food to northern Gaza. Footage shows dead bodies at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah. Some people wear protective gear with charity logos. In this photo, people show their blood-stained British, Polish, and Australian passports.
April 13, 2024: Iran launches multiple drones into Israel, marking the first time Iran has ever launched a full-scale military strike against Israel, despite decades of hostility since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran has threatened to attack Israel since an air strike last week killed two Iranian generals in Syria. Israel has not commented on the attack, but Iran has accused it of being behind it. This photo shows an anti-missile system in operation after Iran launched drones and missiles into Israel, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel.
May 7, 2024: An Israeli tank brigade takes control of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt as Israel moves forward with an attack on the southern city. Israeli tanks moved south of the city overnight, while warplanes bombed areas near the key Rafah border crossing, killing at least 23 Palestinians and injuring several others. The invasion, described by the US as a “limited operation,” came a day after the Israeli military ordered more than a million people living in Rafah to evacuate the southern part of the Gaza Strip city and move to an “expanded humanitarian zone” near Khan Younis. , to prepare an attack to “destroy” Hamas. Photo shows Israeli military vehicles operating on the Gaza side of the Rafah Crossing.
July 27, 2024: A rocket attack on a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights kills 12 children and injures several others, hours after an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon kills three members of the Hezbollah militant group. The attack, the deadliest attack on an Israeli target since war between the two rivals erupted in October 2023, has raised fears of a further conflagration in the region. This photo shows mourners from the Druze minority surrounding the bodies of 12 children and teenagers killed in a rocket attack on a soccer field, during a funeral, in the village of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
July 31, 2024: The political leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, is killed in an Israeli attack in Iran, where he was attending the inauguration of the country’s new president. Haniyeh was elected head of the Hamas political bureau in 2017 to replace Khaled Meshaal, but has become a prominent figure after becoming Palestinian prime minister in 2006. This photo shows Iranians following a truck, center, carrying the coffin of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. and his bodyguard, during the funeral ceremony at Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) Sq. in Tehran, Iran, on August 1, 2024.
August 28, 2024: Israel continues to conduct large-scale military operations in the occupied West Bank. Hamas said 10 fighters were killed in various locations, and the Palestinian Health Ministry reported 11 casualties, without saying whether they were fighters or civilians. An Israeli vehicle drives on the road during an Israeli attack on the Nour Shams camp in Tulkarm, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on August 29, 2024.
September 18, 2024: In a sophisticated long-range attack, fences used by hundreds of Hezbollah members explode almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria killing at least nine people – including an 8-year-old girl – and wounding thousands more. A Lebanese army bomb disposal specialist wearing protective gear prepares, with his colleague, to detonate a walkie-talkie found in the parking lot of the American University Hospital, in Beirut, Lebanon.
September 27, 2024: A wave of airstrikes hits the southern suburbs of Beirut as Israel steps up its offensive against Hezbollah, following a major attack on the Iranian-backed movement’s command center that ultimately killed the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. A photo shows smoke rising above the southern suburbs of Beirut on September 27, 2024.
October 1, 2024: Iran fires a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for Israel’s campaign against Tehran’s Hezbollah ally in Lebanon. Iran has vowed to retaliate for an attack that killed the top leader of its Hezbollah ally in Lebanon. The missile firing came after Israel said its forces had launched a ground offensive into Lebanon, although it described the attack as limited. People are seen visiting the site of Iranian missile remnants in the Negev desert near Arad as a result of Iran’s missile attack on Israel.
Composite image shows Palestinian woman Inas Abu Maamar, 36, hugs the body of her 5-year-old niece Saly, who was killed in an Israeli attack, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, on October 17, 2023 (L). Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem won the prestigious 2024 World Press Photo award for this image. In the second picture, Inas visits the damaged cemetery where Saly was buried, in Khan Younis in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, on September 11, 2024.
