Hamas planned to kill and abduct civilians, documents retrieved from the deadly assault reveal

Palestinian civilians crossing the border from Gaza on the day of the attack, 7 October 2023

Haaretz reports on 14 October 2023:

Hamas terrorists who attacked Israel’s Gaza border communities last Saturday were found with detailed maps and documentation, indicating their intention to take over educational institutions and abduct citizens, including children.

On Friday, the New York Times and NBC News released two extensive articles detailing how the attack was meticulously planned and was originally aimed to harm civilians, including children. The terrorist group attempted to claim that kidnapping people was not an official objective of the attack.

The documents were discovered in the custody of Hamas militants who took part in the deadly assault, according to American media reports. One of the documents explicitly stated that the attack was meant “to capture soldiers and civilians to be used as bargaining chips.”

According to the New York Times, one of the documents was dated October 2022, demonstrating the extensive planning that went into the assault. It also featured videos released by Hamas from the raid, showing at least one militant carrying a map of one of the kibbutzim.

NBC reported that one source within the IDF and another within the Israeli government verified that Israel seized dozens of documents labeled “top secret” in Arabic.

According to the report, one of the documents revealed the attack strategy in the kibbutz of Sa’ad, where the militants failed to penetrate the community and were repelled by the community security force.

The plan involved two Hamas units. One was tasked with taking control of the new Da’at school in the kibbutz, and the other was responsible for searching the old school and the Bnei Akiva youth facility to take hostages.

According to another document published by NBC, the units were told to “kill as many as possible.” Additional seized documents show Hamas had intelligence on every community near the Gaza border and devised plans for each of them, including the targeting of women and children, according to Israeli sources who spoke with NBC.

“The level of specificity would cause anyone in the intelligence field’s jaw to drop,” the army official quoted in the stated article.

A senior IDF officer who spoke with The New York Times stated that the militants who infiltrated the army bases and were positioned near the border acted ruthlessly and even fired at soldiers in their living quarters. The officer went on to say that in other cases, militants were aware of the location of communication equipment and servers and rushed to destroy them. This made it difficult for the troops on the ground to understand the full picture of the situation and respond quickly to the attack.

The report also noted that Hamas divided the groups involved in the extensive incursion into smaller forces and assigned members duties such as drivers, navigators, and demolition experts. Additionally, the organization provided artillery cover in the form of mortar fire for the militants who infiltrated the kibbutzim and military posts.

Furthermore, the documents indicate that Hamas provided its assessment units with information about the number of soldiers at each post, how many vehicles were at their disposal, and how long it would take them to reach each kibbutz.

Some of the units involved in the assault were instructed to ambush key junctions along the border area to prevent the IDF from sending reinforcements, as reported by four official sources who spoke with The New York Times, including military officers.

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