In the past year in the Gaza Strip, Israel has bombed more than 40,000 targets, found 4,700 tunnel shafts and destroyed 1,000 rocket launcher sites, the military said on Monday’s one-year anniversary of the Hamas-led militant attacks that triggered Israel’s assault on the enclave.
Israeli’s Numbers
Tallying troops whose names it received permission to publish, Israel’s military said 726 Israeli soldiers had been killed since Oct. 7, 2023. Of those, 380 died in the Oct. 7 attacks and 346 in Gaza combat starting Oct. 27, 2023.
Injured troops numbered 4,576 since that date. Fifty-six soldiers died as a result of operational accidents, which the military did not define.
In data to mark the Oct. 7 anniversary, the Israeli military said it enlisted 300,000 reservists since the start of the war – 82% men and 18% women and nearly half of them aged 20 to 29.
Rockets And Strikes
Since the start of the war, 13,200 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza. Another 12,400 were fired from Lebanon, while 60 came from Syria, 180 from Yemen and 400 from Iran, the military said.
It said it killed more than 800 “terrorists” in Lebanon, where 4,900 targets have been struck from the air along with about 6,000 ground targets. Over the past year, Israel arrested more than 5,000 suspects in the West Bank and Jordan Valley.
Gaza Commanders Killed
The military said it killed eight Gaza militant brigade commanders, about 30 battalion commanders and 165 company commanders over the past year.
The war in Gaza was triggered when Palestinian Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies. More than 100 hostages remain held by Hamas.
Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Wider Middle-East War?
As the war reaches its first anniversary, Israelis face a wider war with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and potentially with Iran itself, which launched a barrage of missiles at Israel last week.
Although increasing numbers of Israelis have called for a ceasefire in Gaza recently, there has also been wide support for war against Hamas and Hezbollah, which the Israeli military says had plans to launch an Oct. 7-style attack of its own in northern Israel.
Some 80% of Israelis said it was right to launch an offensive against Hezbollah even though the war in Gaza is still going on, according to a survey for the Israel Democracy Institute last week.
(with inputs from Reuters)
