It’s two years to the day since Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. Watch live below as events are held across Israel to commemorate the anniversary.
Tuesday 7 October 2025 08:58, UK
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Hundreds of people are gathering at the site of the Nova music festival in southern Israel for an event marking the two-year anniversary of the October 7 attacks.
Some 378 people (344 civilians and 34 security personnel) were killed and 44 hostages taken when Hamas-led militants attacked the event as part of a wider attack on Israel two years ago.
You can watch the event live in the stream at the top of this page.
The war in Gaza was triggered two years ago today when Hamas and other militant groups killed approximately 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped more than 250 others.
Since then, there have been only two ceasefires – in November 2023 and January 2025.
The first truce only lasted a week but saw 105 hostages released from Gaza in exchange for scores of Palestinian prisoners.
A second ceasefire was not struck until January this year, shortly before Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Hamas freed 33 hostages during the first phase of the ceasefire, lasting eight weeks, with Israel releasing around 50 Palestinian prisoners for every Israeli freed.
Under the planned second stage, Israel was supposed to agree to a permanent ceasefire. But Israel resumed its offensive on 18 March, shattering the ceasefire and derailing the talks, saying it did so to pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages.
Here are the latest images from southern Israel, showing smoke rising in Gaza this morning after explosions there.
Over the weekend, Israeli media reported that the IDF has reduced its operations to defensive manoeuvres in Gaza after Donald Trump called on the country to “stop bombing” as talks to end the war intensified.
An Israeli government spokesperson later clarified that there was “a temporary halt in certain bombings” – meaning it will still continue to strike the enclave, however.
By Dominic Waghorn, international affairs editor
It is hard to remember the Middle East before October 7 2023, so much has changed in the wake of its horrendous events.
Before the attack, the region’s geopolitical tectonic plates were grinding, but an uneasy status quo held sway and observed certain rules.
But that day unleashed an earthquake, changing everything.
In two years of turmoil since, the region’s rulebook has been torn to pieces.
The first rule: Israel would manage the threat from Hamas but not try to eradicate it. Israel’s policy of dividing and ruling the Palestinians’ rival factions had come back to bite them.
Instead, Israelis insisted in one voice after October 7 no more “mowing the grass”, their euphemism for cutting Hamas down to size, from time to time.
This time, the job must be finished.
Events are taking place across Israel today to mark the two-year anniversary of the October 7 attacks.
The families of the hostages are to come together in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square, which has become an unofficial memorial site commemorating the captives and those killed during the war. A siren sound is expected to be played out.
You can follow the events in the live stream at the top of this page.
Our international correspondent Alex Rossi is in Sderot, a city in southern Israel close to the Gaza border that came under attack by Hamas militants on October 7.
He says today is going to be a “very difficult” one for Israelis “as they process what that day meant”.
“They will remember their dead. They will remember the captives still held in Gaza.”
But it’s not just the anniversary of the attack, Rossi adds – it’s also the anniversary of the war in Gaza starting.
“We can see smoke on the horizon now. We’re hearing the crump of artillery every couple of minutes or so.
“That war is still continuing. And we don’t know at this stage when exactly it will be over.”
Palestinian health authorities say Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 67,000 people since the October 7 attacks, with nearly a third of those under the age of 18.
In the first months of the war, the number of deaths was calculated by simply counting bodies that arrived in hospitals, with data including the names and identity numbers for the majority of those killed.
The Hamas-run health ministry began including unidentified bodies in May 2024, which accounted for nearly a third of the overall total, before returning to only identified bodies in October of that year.
Gaza kept robust population statistics and had better health information systems than most Middle East countries before the war, with the United Nations citing the health ministry’s figures as credible.
However, it is likely not all the victims are included in the figures – the health ministry estimates several thousand bodies are under rubble, and it does not count the 460 malnutrition-related deaths recorded due to famine in north Gaza.
In addition, official Palestinian tallies of direct deaths were likely undercounted over the first nine months of the war due to Gaza’s disintegrating healthcare infrastructure.
The figures do not differentiate between civilians and Hamas combatants.
Israeli officials have previously disputed the death toll figures because of Hamas’s control in Gaza, claiming they are manipulated.
The Israeli military said it had killed nearly 20,000 Hamas fighters in January this year, which it calculated through a combination of counting bodies on the battlefield, intercepts of Hamas communications and assessments of personnel residing in destroyed targets.
Around 466 Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat since its ground operation in Gaza began two years ago.
The Palestinian health ministry recorded an overall death toll in Gaza of 67,160 as of yesterday, with more than 1,200 families completely wiped out, analysis by Reuters showed.
Ceremonies are being held throughout Israel today to mark the second anniversary of the October 7 attack.
Earlier – see our 5.28am post – we brought you images from a ceremony in Kfar Aza in southern Israel, the same site where invading Hamas militants attacked two years ago.
At 11am (9am UK time), dozens of bereaved families whose loved ones were killed at the Nova music festival will hold a ceremony at the site of the rave.
Nir Oz, the hardest-hit community on the day of the attack, with about one quarter of its 400 residents killed or abducted, will also hold a ceremony at 6pm (4pm UK time).
Tonight, the main memorial ceremony will take place in Tel Aviv, organised by bereaved families. It will begin at 7.30pm UK time and will be broadcast on television networks in Israel.
Why are there no official ceremonies?
There are no government-organised ceremonies today. Instead, the official national ceremony of remembrance will be held on 16 October, in Israel’s national cemetery.
That’s because, in March 2024, Israel’s government approved the annual day of commemoration for the October 7 attacks to be the 24th of Tishrei in the Hebrew calendar.
This choice avoids the Gregorian date of October 7 for practical and cultural reasons: early October often overlaps with major Jewish festivals like Sukkot, with Israel wanting to separate mourning from celebration.
Ruby Chen’s son Itay was killed during the October 7 attacks and his body was taken into Gaza, where it remains today.
He tells lead world news presenter Yalda Hakim he’s hopeful the indirect peace talks between Israel and Hamas in Egypt will lead to the return of his son’s body.
The negotiations “feel different” this time around, Chen says, but he adds all parties must “keep their eyes on the ball and remember that what comes first is the hostages”.
By Adam Parsons, Middle East correspondent
For a long time, Rita Lifshitz would come back to Kibbutz Nir Oz every week, sit outside the house of her father-in-law, Oded, and have a drink.
To raise a glass to the people who had gone. To remember October 7.
“We used to drink a beer every weekend,” she tells me, her eyes trained on the small little table on the patio where they would sit and talk.
“So for 500 days I came to have a beer outside the table. Here I put the beer for grandpa and I put the beer for me. He was my psychologist for 500 days.
“He was only a few kilometres from me and I just imagine him coming in with a big smile.”
Around her, the charred remains of violence, death, and devastation. The burnt-out wreckage of happy lives that came to a horrific end.
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