Katz: IDF has killed two-thirds of Oct. 7 perpetrators, will eliminate remaining 2,000

Some 4,000 terrorists who invaded Israel during the October 7 onslaught three years ago have been killed to date, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Monday.

“Six thousand terrorists crossed the border into Israel on October 7 and carried out the atrocities. Of them, 4,000 have been killed so far, leaving another 2,000,” he said in a statement.

The figures cited by Katz were presented by Military Intelligence Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder during a cabinet meeting on Sunday night.

According to previous assessments by the Israel Defense Forces, around 5,600 terrorists invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, and between 1,200 and 1,600 of them were killed inside Israeli territory during the Hamas-led attack. The latest figures put the number of terrorists who participated in the onslaught at 6,000.

Another 300 alleged perpetrators have been captured by Israel and await judgment by special military tribunals, which have yet to be set up.

Thousands of the terrorists returned to the Strip following the massacre, and, according to the latest figures, around 2,400 were killed in the subsequent fighting or after they were targeted by Israel.

As reported in July by The Times of Israel, the IDF and Shin Bet have devoted significant time and resources to eliminating the terrorists who took part in the October 7 atrocities, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

Officers of a special joint IDF-Shin Bet unit, dubbed “Nili,” have painstakingly worked over the last three years to identify, find, and eliminate the thousands of Gazans involved in the atrocities.

It has built its list of names of Gazans who invaded Israeli territory by using a plethora of video and photographic evidence of the attack, much of it captured by the terrorists themselves, and running the footage through facial recognition software. Also on the list are all Hamas leaders involved in orchestrating the massacre, according to Israeli officials.

Israeli officials have invoked the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics as a precedent for the retribution campaign against the October 7 terrorists, pointing to the years-long and largely unsuccessful Mossad-led effort to track down and eliminate anyone linked to the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the Games.

In the past few months, the IDF and Shin Bet appeared to have stepped up the large-scale retribution campaign. Despite technically having agreed to a ceasefire with Hamas, Israel appears to have justified the strikes by portraying them as defensive measures against terrorists who posed a threat to troops, meaning the IDF was permitted to act against them during the pause in fighting.

In September alone, 17 terrorists who participated in the October 7, 2023, onslaught, kidnapped hostages, or held hostages in captivity, were killed in Israeli strikes, according to the IDF.

Katz said Monday that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have instructed the military and all other security bodies to kill all of those who took part in the onslaught, “without limitation and under any circumstances, from the senior ranks to the junior ranks.”