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ASHKELON, Israel — Near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, terror and confusion reign.
As POLITICO arrives at the cataclysmic scene, parents hunt desperately for their missing children and demand retribution against the Hamas terrorists who perpetrated a bloodbath of monstrous proportions.
Israel has been in a state of emergency since Iranian-backed Hamas militants stormed out of the Gaza Strip at dawn on Saturday and unleashed a lethal assault on civilians, leaving more than 700 Israelis confirmed dead and 2,150 wounded.
It was the “largest civilian massacre” in Israeli history, army spokesman Doron Spielman tells POLITICO.
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Sunday morning, we fly aboard a Ryanair jet from Berlin into Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on one of the few commercial flights to Israel that has not been canceled. Typically vibrant and bustling, the city — which has come under fire from Palestinian rocket attacks — has been turned into a ghost town.
Driving south from Tel Aviv toward the hot zone attacked by Hamas, we pass cars crawling in the oppressive near-30-degree heat in the opposite direction away from Gaza.
Vehicles heading north are jammed for more than a dozen kilometers at a police checkpoint.
Beside the southbound lane, 25 Israeli battle tanks and several armored vehicles are stationed menacingly.
An Israeli battle tank rolling toward the Gaza border in Sderot, Israel on October 8, 2023 Peter Wilke/POLITICO
The mayor of Sderot, Alon Davidi, stands next to pools of dried blood in front of the destroyed building.
When the terrorists came to kill in his city, he wasn’t there at first, but arrived later with the security forces. As we speak, rocket strikes by the Israeli army in Gaza can be heard in the background. “We have to hit them hard,” Davidi demands.
Israeli army spokesman Spielman refused to guarantee that there were no more terrorists in Sderot, only that their forces had regained control of the city.
On Sunday, too, there are repeated rocket alarms in Sderot. We hear the muffled sound of the Israeli Iron Dome air defense system, which has just intercepted a missile.
But on Sunday night, Israeli media reports on another suspected terrorist infiltration inside the city.
The army may have regained control, but security has not yet been restored here.
