AP PHOTOS: 100 days of agony in an unprecedented war between Israel and Hamas
JERUSALEM (AP) — Photographs of an unprecedented war between Israel and Hamas have captured 100 days of agony.
Scenes from Hamas' surprise attack on a music festival, farming communities and army outposts in southern Israel are seared into the national psyche. The bloodied bodies of young men and women lying on a highway where they were gunned down. An older woman squeezed between two gunmen on a motorcycle while she is being taken to the Gaza Strip as a hostage.
Some 1,200 people were killed that day, Israel's worst single loss of civilian lives. About 250 others were abducted. Some, mostly women and children, were eventually released or traded for Palestinian prisoners. Some were killed in captivity.
The pain endures for the families of more than 100 people still held hostage by Hamas. Street graffiti and public vigils keep their plight in Israelis’ minds. The shock from what happened on Oct. 7 has fueled a nationwide determination to carry through the military’s offensive in Gaza until Hamas is eliminated.
Every day in Gaza, Israel's firing of rockets, artillery and missiles produce new images of Palestinian suffering and loss. Rescuers pull the body of a toddler out of the wreckage of a demolished building. Outside of a morgue, relatives weep over loved ones lined up on the pavement in white body bags — another family killed in the Israeli bombardment.
At the few hospitals still operating, wounded patients are treated on the floor. Many of them are children, bloody and crying in pain. Overwhelmed doctors struggle to treat them with an increasingly insufficient stock of medicines and other supplies.
In 100 days, the military's relentless bombardment and ground assault has killed around more than 23,000 Palestinians — roughly 1% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people. The...