What we know
- The Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a surprise and unprecedented attack on Israel early this morning, a multi-front ambush that has some questioning how Israel's robust intelligence was caught unaware.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by saying the country was at war with Hamas and that reservists would be called up to boost the armed forces. “The enemy will pay a price it has never known before," he said.
- Over 200 Israelis have been killed, Israel's Foreign Ministry said. At least 256 people in Gaza were killed in the retaliatory Israeli strikes, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.
- Hamas fighters have taken a number of civilians and soldiers hostage, with fighting ongoing in southern Israel many hours after the operation began, the Israeli military said.
- President Joe Biden condemned what he called an "appalling assault against Israel by Hamas terrorists" and said that "Israel has a right to defend itself and its people." He added: "My administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering."
- The bloodshed is the most significant escalation of tensions between Hamas and Israel in years.
- NBC News’s Raf Sanchez is reporting from Ashkelon, Israel.
Iran appears to have played a role in planning the attack, former U.S. officials say
The unprecedented scale and the guerrilla tactics employed by Hamas in its attack on Israel indicate Iran likely played a significant role in planning the multi-pronged assault, former U.S. intelligence and military officials say.
From the use of fast boats to hostage taking to swarming their adversary, the Hamas operation displayed an approach often used by Iran and its proxies against opponents with superior conventional forces, three former senior intelligence officials and a former senior military officer told NBC News.
“The sophistication and the complexity of the attack seems beyond what Hamas could do on its own,” said one former senior U.S. intelligence official.
Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas spokesman, told the BBC in an interview on Sunday that Hamas had direct backing for the operation from Iran. Others helped as well, Hams told the broadcaster, without identifying them.
The Wall Street Journal reported reported on Sunday that Iranian security officials helped Hamas plan the surprise attack and approved it at a meeting in Beirut last Monday, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah. The Journal reported that officers in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the sophisticated air, land and sea assault.
Two U.S. officials told NBC News, that they do not have information to corroborate the Journal account. Earlier on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN, “We have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack, but there is certainly a long relationship” between Iran and Hamas.
China calls for end to hostilities, two-state solution
China weighed in on the war Sunday by calling for an immediate end to hostilities and a resumption of peace talks.
"The fundamental way out of the conflict lies in implementing the two-state solution and establishing an independent State of Palestine," a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said in a Q&A published Sunday morning.
The spokesperson defined the war as one between "Palestine and Israel," despite the leading role that militant group Hamas played in carrying out Saturday's attacks.
"We call on relevant parties to remain calm, exercise restraint and immediately end the hostilities to protect civilians and avoid further deterioration of the situation," the Ministry of Foreign affairs spokesperson said.
Hezbollah fires on 3 Israeli positions in disputed area along border with Syria’s Golan Heights
Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group fired dozens of rockets and shells on Sunday at three Israeli positions in a disputed area along the country’s border with Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Hezbollah, a militant group allied with Hamas in Lebanon, said in a statement that the attack using “large numbers of rockets and shells” was in solidarity with the “Palestinian resistance.” It said the Israeli positions were directly hit.
Israel’s military fired back at the Lebanese areas, but there was no immediate word on casualties.
The Israeli army said it shelled the areas where the fire came from on the Lebanese side of the border.
Chebaa Farms was captured by Israel from Syria during the 1967 Mideast war, but Lebanon considers it and the nearby Kfar Chouba hills as Lebanese territories.
The Golan Heights were annexed by Israel in 1981.
256 Palestinians have died, health ministry says
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza says 256 people have died since the first attacks early yesterday morning.
Among the dead are 20 children, the ministry said. All the dead were described as "victims of the Israeli aggression."
The hostilities began when militant organization Hamas launched a surprise attack against Israel after the end of a weeklong religious celebration known as Sukkot.
The ministry said 1,788 people were injured, including 121 children.
Photo: Destruction and an air strike in Gaza City
A man walks atop the rubble of a tower destroyed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on Saturday.
Fire and smoke rises above buildings during an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on on Sunday.
Cambodian student dies in Israel fighting
A Cambodian student has died in the violence in Israel, the Cambodian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday. The Southeast Asian country has some 450 students in Israel, the statement added.
Two workers from Thailand were also believed to have been kidnapped in Israel, according to a statement from Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The information came from the Thai Embassy in Tel Aviv. Israel has not been able to verify the claim.
“The Royal Thai Government is taking this matter very seriously,” the statement said. “Prime Minister [Srettha Thavisin] has issued an order for the Royal Thai Air Force to be on standby for the immediate evacuation of Thai nationals from Israel by air, as needed.”
Hamas rockets strike hospital in Israeli town
Before daybreak on Sunday, militants fired more rockets from Gaza, hitting a hospital in the Israeli coastal town of Ashkelon. The hospital sustained damage, said senior hospital official Tal Bergman.
Video provided by Barzilai Medical Center showed a large hole punched into a wall and chunks of debris scattered on the ground of what appeared to be an empty room and a hallway. There was no report of casualties.
Israeli airstrikes in Gaza had intensified after nightfall, flattening residential buildings in giant explosions, including a 14-story tower that held dozens of apartments as well as Hamas offices in central Gaza City. Israeli forces fired a warning just before.
Around 3 a.m., a loudspeaker atop a mosque in Gaza City blared a stark warning to residents of nearby apartment buildings: Evacuate immediately. Just minutes later, an Israeli airstrike reduced one nearby five-story building to ashes.
After one Israeli strike, a Hamas rocket barrage hit four cities, including Tel Aviv and a nearby suburb. Throughout the day, Hamas fired more than 3,500 rockets, the Israeli military said.
The surprise attack by Hamas militants on Israel suggests a massive intelligence failure as the Israeli government appeared blindsided by the infiltration of Hamas fighters across the southern border and the launch of thousands of rockets.
The Hamas assault by air, land and sea also raised questions as to why U.S. intelligence agencies apparently did not see it coming, experts and former intelligence officials said.
U.S. officials said that if the Israelis knew an attack was imminent, they did not share it with Washington.
“We were not tracking this,” one senior U.S. military official told NBC News.
War in Israel tests Biden’s foreign policy case for 2024
WASHINGTON — Presidential races don’t normally hinge on crises in distant nations, but the armed conflict that broke out in Israel threatens to undercut Joe Biden’s argument that his foreign policy expertise is making the world more secure.
The attacks launched by Hamas fighters expose deficiencies in Israeli intelligence, experts said, while raising fresh questions about what the U.S. is getting in return for the time spent building surveillance capabilities and partnerships in the volatile Middle East.
“This is an enormous intelligence failure by the Israelis and the Americans,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and Middle East specialist. “I don’t see any reason to believe that either Washington or Jerusalem had any expectation this was coming.”
FAA warns U.S. pilots to be cautious over Israel
Pilots from the United States should exercise "extreme caution" when flying over Israeli airspace amid hostilities between Hamas militants and Israel forces that erupted today, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
No specific threats were outlined, but the FAA said in a Notice to Air Missions, or NOTAM, that the situation was "potentially hazardous."
The administration recommended maintaining uninterrupted contact with air traffic control while in the Tel-Aviv flight information region.
NOTAM should be monitored for possible airspace closure announcements, too, the administration said.
Israel cutting off electricity, fuel and goods to Gaza
Israel's government will halt the supply of electricity, fuel and goods to Gaza, according to a statement tonight from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu said that the "first stage" of Israel's counteroffensive against Hamas had ended, claiming that Israeli military forces had fought off the "vast majority" of Hamas militants behind the early morning incursion.
He pledged to continue counterattacks without "limitations nor respite."
"We are embarking on a long and difficult war that was forced on us by a murderous Hamas attack," he said.