Palestinians near the border fence with Israel from Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 7, 2023 (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90).
Approximately 6,000 Gazans invaded Israel and participated in the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, Israel’s Channel 12 news revealed on Saturday. This number is twice the initial estimate (3,000) previously believed by Israeli intelligence to have breached the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip.
The Channel 12 announcement cited a new report compiled by the Israel Defense Forces Gaza Division that was submitted to IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi.
While a large number of unaffiliated Gazans crossed the border into Israel, some 3,800 terrorists from Hamas’ elite Nukhba forces led the invasion, which resulted in the massacre of at least 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of about 250 people from southern Israeli border communities.
The revised figures reveal the Hamas-led invasion was even more comprehensive than originally thought, as the previous estimate underestimated the number of unaffiliated Gazans who participated in the terror attack. In addition, previous estimates did not differentiate between Nukhba terrorists and conventional Hamas terrorists.
Furthermore, while Israeli intelligence initially estimated 60 breaches along the Gaza-Israel border, the Israeli military has revised this figure, now indicating that the border fence was breached at nearly double that number of locations, totaling 119.
The new IDF report did not specify the status of the 2,200 Gazan residents who attacked Israel on Oct. 7 not belonging to Hamas’ Nukhba force. While video footage revealed that many of them were unaffiliated, some of them were likely members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and other smaller Palestinian terrorist organizations in Gaza.
Israeli intelligence now estimates that some 1,000 terrorists inside of Gaza took an active part in the unprecedented attack on the Jewish state. The invasion of southern Israel was coordinated with a simultaneous massive rocket attack, primarily on southern Israeli communities.
Hamas and other terror groups fired some 5,000 rockets at Israel on Oct. 7, about 60% of them (or 3,000) launched during the first four hours of the attack, according to the IDF.
If the new data is accurate, it would mean that a total of approximately 7,000 affiliated and unaffiliated terrorists from Gaza participated in what became the largest massacre of civilian Jews since the Holocaust.
The IDF Spokesman’s Office stated that the IDF will continue its operational probe of the Oct. 7 events and publish its findings once the report is complete.
The Israeli military recently estimated it has eliminated some 17,000 terrorists since Oct. 7. The number includes many senior Hamas commanders, including Mohammed Deif, Marwan Issa and Rafa’a Salameh.
In late July, Hamas’ top political chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran’s capital, Tehran. While the Iranian regime and others in the international community believe Israel was behind the assassination, the IDF has so far not taken responsibility for the explosion that killed Haniyeh in the guest house where he was staying.
