It’s two years since Hamas militants stormed into Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage. Families are demanding an explanation from Benjamin Netanyahu after he got the number still captive in Gaza wrong. Watch live below as memorial events are held across Israel.
Tuesday 7 October 2025 12:54, UK
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Furious bystanders have confronted a woman cutting down yellow ribbons for Israeli hostages from a fence in north London.
Video footage shows the woman with a pair of scissors as she cut down the memorial bands that the Jewish community had tied to railings yesterday.
She declared the ribbons, which have become a symbol of the campaign to bring hostages home from Gaza, were “condoning genocide”.
It comes as Sir Keir Starmer urges students not to protest on the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks, calling it “un-British”.
The Metropolitan Police said: “Officers have stepped up reassurance patrols in the Muswell Hill area, following reports that yellow ribbons were removed from fence poles.
“At approximately 16.25hrs on Monday, 6 October, officers were made aware of a video circulating online which appears to show a woman removing the ribbons in Muswell Hill.
“Officers attended the location and are reviewing the footage to determine whether any offences, including hate crime or criminal damage, have been committed. Enquiries remain ongoing.
“Anyone with information is urged to contact police via 101 or on X @MetCC quoting reference CAD 4948/06OCT25. Alternatively, information can be provided anonymously to the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.”
The Nova music festival site in Re’im, about three miles from the border with Gaza, is a shrine to the people killed there on this day two years ago.
Commemorations to mark the second anniversary of the Hamas attack are taking place, with families gathering to remember the 378 people killed there and 44 taken hostage.
Boards showing photographs of the dead and biographies of their lives are up at the site, where a quiet has fallen.
By Alex Rossi, Middle East correspondent, in Re’im
There are families wearing T-shirts picturing their loved ones and friends holding plant pots and flowers. There is music but it’s a muted tone where memories are being shared by families of those who were killed by in the October 7 massacre.
I find Michal Bitton standing by two photographs of Maya Bitton, her daughter, and Eliran Mizrahi, her daughter’s boyfriend.
She wants to tell me the love story between the young couple.
Michal recalls Eliran sat her and her husband down to say “I want to marry your daughter and I want your permission”.
Maya called her mother on the morning of October 7 from the Nova music festival to tell her “many terrorists” were around. Eliran text Michal to say “don’t worry, we will be strong”.
The pair were later found wrapped in each other’s arms. “Instead of getting married, they got buried together,” Michal says.
Later, an elderly father slowly walks up to me. His son, Sergeant Major Alon Barad, was killed on duty as a police officer. He showed me videos of his son in action on that morning.
Alon was finishing a night shift at the Nova music festival site when he realised the severity of the situation.
Along with other police officers, they closed off an entrance to the site to ensure festival goers could escape safely.
Alon and seven other police officers successfully evacuated more than 1,500 people.
As Israel is remembering the October 7 massacre, peace talks that many hope will put an end to the conflict that has engulfed the Middle East are under way in Egypt.
Negotiators from Israel and Hamas are looking to hammer out arrangements for initiating the first phase of Donald Trump’s peace plan, including the release of the remaining hostages.
They are flanked by mediators from the US and Qatar: a spokesperson of the foreign ministry in Doha said today that Qatar can be “neither optimistic nor pessimistic”.
That said, our military analyst Michael Clarke is “as hopeful as we could have been” that a peace deal is “quite a lot closer”, as he tells our presenter Gareth Barlow.
He also shares his thoughts on the negotiators involved, some of whom he considers particularly useful to further the talks.
Watch the video for his insight on the state of the negotiations…
Here are the latest images from the site of the Nova music festival in Re’im, southern Israel, where a ceremony has been taking place marking the two-year anniversary of the October 7 attack.
Remember, you can watch a dedicated live stream from the site of the festival at the top of this page.
European leaders have been marking the two-year anniversary of the October 7 attack this morning.
EU boss chief Ursula von der Leyen said the memory of those that were killed during the attack are being honoured by the mediators “working tirelessly for peace”.
“The immediate release of all hostages and a ceasefire are now within reach,” she adds.
France’s Emmanuel Macron said the “pain remains raw” two years on from the attacks: “I reiterate France’s call: the release of all hostages and a ceasefire must take place without delay.”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also shared a message about the “unspeakable crimes that make October 7 one of the darkest pages in history”.
She added: “We all have a duty to do everything within our power to ensure that this precious and fragile opportunity – the peace plan presented by President Trump – succeeds.”
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said: “As talks advance under the [Trump] plan, we urge all parties to act with courage and restraint: toward a lasting ceasefire, release of all hostages and a future of peace and security for all.”
Several British nationals and people with links to the UK were among those taken hostage during the October 7 attacks, including Oded and Yocheved Lifschitz.
Their daughter, Sharone Lifschitz, a London-based filmmaker and academic, tells presenter Kamali Melbourne that weeks of uncertainty passed before she finally found out that her elderly parents had been taken hostage.
She was sure her mother had died until Hamas announced that they would release her.
Her father, a journalist who “campaigned for reconciliation” with Palestinians, died in captivity.
Lifschitz also shares the dramatic moment when attackers broke into her parents’ safe room – watch her account in the video:
The families of Israeli hostages are demanding an explanation from Benjamin Netanyahu after the Israeli prime minister misquoted the number of hostages that are left in Gaza during an interview with US political commentator Ben Shapiro.
Speaking on the eve of the two-year anniversary of the October 7 attacks, Netanyahu expressed hope that the war in Gaza will end “soon” with the help of Donald Trump, before incorrectly claiming 46 hostages are left inside the enclave.
He said: “What started in Gaza will end in Gaza, with the release of 40 of our hostages, 46 actually, 20 are alive.”
In a statement released this morning, The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it wanted “an explanation and clarification” of Netanyahu’s incorrect tally.
“Today, two years ago, 251 abductees were taken in their pyjamas from their beds, from their bases, and from a music festival into the hellish captivity in Gaza.
“Four additional abductees had been in Gaza for many years. They were all abducted during your watch. So we will update you – there are 48 abductees in Gaza.”
The statement adds: “It is time to reach an agreement that will end the longest war in our history and return all 48 abductees for rehabilitation and burial,” the statement continues.
“48. Not 40, not 46. All of them, now.”
It’s not only in Israel where events marking the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks are taking place.
In Berlin, the images of hostages and those murdered during the Hamas-led attack have been placed on over 1,000 empty chairs in front of the Brandenburg Gate.
The installation has been set up by Germany’s Jewish Student Union.
On the morning of October 7 2023, Yonatan Haber, a reservist paratrooper in the Israeli army, was among those who got called up to repel Hamas’s attack.
Haber says it was the call he was “trained for in the army… the call that my friends, my country need me.”
“I didn’t even think… what was in my head were the civilians that were suffering” he tells presenter Kamali Melbourne.
Being only 25, Haber says he will spend the rest of his life trying to process what he saw that day.
Watch the full interview…
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