Seven days of terror that shook the world and changed the Middle East

Since dawn broke on 7 October, thousands have died and the political fallout has spread across the region. Reporters tell the full story of a week that began in bloodshed and ended in fear

- Bethan McKernan, Ruth Michaelson, Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum, Hazem Balousha, Sufian Taha, Harriet Sherwood and Peter Beaumont

• 260 The number of people killed at the Supernova all-night party at Kibbutz Re'im, close to the border with Gaza, which was attacked by Hamas forces soon after dawn on 7 October

The sun was rising over the desert in southern Israel when sirens wailed and rockets thudded. But at an all-night festival at a kibbutz near the Gaza border, the sounds blended with the music and the people danced on.

A few kilometres to the west, Hamas forces had breached the hi-tech security fence that surrounds Gaza, a narrow strip of land where 2.3 million Palestinians live mostly in misery and hardship. In deeply shocking scenes, hundreds of armed men poured into Israel on motorbikes, trucks, bicycles and paragliders. Thousands of rockets were fired at towns and communities in southern Israel and as far away as the cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Israeli families rushed to bomb shelters and safe rooms. At the Supernova festival at Kibbutz Re'im, panic took hold as people realised Hamas gunmen were in their midst.

Over the next few hours, hundreds of Israelis were slaughtered in a terrorist attack that shocked the world. And since what US President Joe Biden described as "the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust", Palestinians in Gaza have also faced violence, destruction and a humanitarian catastrophe on an unprecedented scale.

The attack 

It came from the air, in the form of at least 2,500 rockets, and on the ground. The attack caught Israeli security forces and intelligence agencies, politicians and the public off guard.