Israel to mark October 7 attack as Gaza war spreads

Israel marks the first anniversary Monday of the devastating October 7 Hamas attack that sparked the Gaza war and has now engulfed neighbouring Lebanon, creating a perilous regional crisis.

President Isaac Herzog will lead a memorial service at Sderot, one of the cities hardest hit during the onslaught by Palestinian militants.

A rally calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip will be held at Beeri, a kibbutz community where more than 100 people were killed last October 7.

A memorial is also planned at kibbutz Reim, site of the Nova music festival where militants murdered hundreds of people.

In Israel's commercial hub Tel Aviv, events are being organised from Sunday, with families of hostages still held in Gaza planning a demonstration to demand their release.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to deliver a televised address to the nation on Monday, although details of official events to mark the painful anniversary remain unclear.

"Our wounds still cannot fully heal because they are ongoing. Because hostages are still being tortured, executed, and dying in captivity," Herzog said in a statement issued on Saturday to mark the anniversary.

"Because they and their families are still living in the loss and the terror of October 7 right at these very moments... In many senses, we are all still living the aftermath of October 7."

On that day, Hamas militants stormed across the border from Gaza into Israel in what would become the deadliest attack in the country's history. At the end of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the militants launched their assault by land, air, and sea.

A year later, the confirmed death toll from the attack, including hostages killed in captivity, has reached 1,205 on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Militants abducted 251 hostages on October 7, 97 of whom are still captive in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military has said are dead.

Hamas fighters stormed army bases, kibbutz communities and the music festival, with at least 370 people killed at the Nova festival alone.

- Israel 'at war' -

Within hours of the attack, Netanyahu declared that Israel was "at war", and launched a military campaign aiming to destroy Hamas.

Since then, large swathes of Gaza have been reduced to rubble, and nearly all of the territory's 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once as a humanitarian crisis worsened.

Israel's relentless offensive on Gaza has so far killed at least 41,825 people, a majority of them civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.

The figures have been found to be reliable by the United Nations.

Since its ground offensive began in Gaza on October 27, Israel's military says that 348 soldiers have been killed.

The war quickly expanded to include Israel's border with Lebanon when Iran-backed Hezbollah, a key Hamas ally, began firing rockets at Israel.

The cross-border attacks displaced more than 60,000 people inside Israel.

The fighting between Hezbollah and Israeli forces has intensified over the past month, with Israel bombarding Lebanon in air raids and beginning ground operations this week.

While hundreds of Lebanese have been killed, Israel has also targeted and assassinated key Hezbollah commanders, including its leader Hassan Nasrallah in a massive Beirut air strike.

The war in Lebanon and Gaza now threatens to spread after Iran fired about 200 missiles at Israel on October 1 -- its second such direct attack on the country in less than six months.

Iran said it launched the barrage in retaliation for the killing of Nasrallah and also Ismail Haniyeh, the former Hamas political leader killed in Tehran in July.

Iran and Hamas blame Israel for Haniyeh's death, but Israel has not commented.

"The resistance in the region will not back down with these martyrdoms, and will win," Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a rare sermon on Friday.

Iran and the international community are now bracing for a potential Israeli retaliation after the missile attack.