Terrorists took Kfar Aza in an hour. Recapturing it took the IDF days, probe finds

On the morning of October 7, 2023, some 250 terrorists swarmed into the unsuspecting Gaza border community of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, murdering and abducting dozens of residents as Israeli forces struggled to reach the area for several hours, in what would later become one of the longest battles of the onslaught.

Residents were left to fend entirely for themselves for almost the first two hours of the onslaught. The army — plunged into complete disarray by the shock attack on dozens of towns and military posts — failed to come to their rescue as terrorists moved from home to home, kidnapping, brutalizing and massacring civilians well into the afternoon.

On Monday, the Israel Defense Forces presented its probe into the battle at the kibbutz — only the second made public as the military carries out detailed investigations of some 40 battles that took place that day. It highlighted the heroism of Kfar Aza’s local security team and other Israeli forces that participated in the fighting, as well as the army’s colossal failures that allowed throngs of terrorists to overrun the kibbutz and hold it for hours.

The probe concluded that the IDF “failed in its mission to protect” the residents of Kfar Aza, largely because the military had never prepared for such an event — an Israeli community being captured by terrorists, as well as a widescale attack on numerous towns and army bases simultaneously by thousands of terrorists.

Unlike other towns attacked on October 7, fighting in Kfar Aza, a community of around 950, lasted for days after the initial attack, as dozens of terrorists fortified themselves inside homes across the kibbutz.

In all, 62 residents — including five soldiers and a member of the Shin Bet — and 18 security personnel were killed in Kfar Aza on October 7, and a further 19 civilians were taken hostage by the Hamas terrorists.

Two hostages from Kfar Aza were later mistakenly killed by Israeli troops as they tried to escape their captors in Gaza; 15 have been returned in hostage deals with the terror group; and two remain captive in the Strip — twins Gali and Ziv Berman.

Utterly unprepared

Kfar Aza was one of the hardest-hit communities in Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, during which some 5,600 terrorists stormed across the border, massacred some 1,200 people, and took 251 hostages to Gaza. Nearly every single home in the community was either damaged or destroyed amid the fighting.

The probe into what happened at Kfar Aza, carried out by Col. Oded Ziman, the commander of the 55th Reserve Paratroopers Brigade, covers all aspects of the fighting in the kibbutz that began October 7.

Ziman and his team spent hundreds of hours investigating the onslaught and battle at Kfar Aza. The IDF said they reviewed every possible source of information — footage taken by terrorists with body-mounted cameras, residents’ WhatsApp messages, surveillance videos, and interviews with survivors, former hostages, and those who fought to defend the kibbutz and made visits to the scene.

The Kfar Aza probe was aimed at drawing specific operational conclusions for the military. It did not examine the wider picture of the military’s perception of Gaza and Hamas in recent years, which was covered in separate, larger, investigations into the IDF’s intelligence and defenses.

The army is also not looking at policies set by the political leadership. That way, it avoids conflict with government leaders who have insisted such investigations must wait until after the war against Hamas ends.

The State Comptroller’s Office has urged the army to cooperate with its investigations as well, saying internal probes are insufficient. There have also been numerous calls for a state commission of inquiry that would look into all aspects of what went wrong relating to the attack, but the government has rebuffed calls to establish this most powerful independent investigative forum.

The investigation found that Kfar Aza was captured by terrorists within the first hour of the attack, and the first troops did not arrive for an hour after that.

The kibbutz was not prepared for any sort of wide-scale frontal assault, according to the probe. The community had a basic security fence and there were few surveillance cameras; the local security team’s weapons were locked up in the armory, and the team did not have handheld radios.

24 units; little coordination all day

Even when the first troops did arrive, there was no command and control directing their movements. In the kibbutz’s neighborhood for young families, where most of the kidnappings took place in the late morning, Hamas terrorists moved around freely while troops on the kibbutz were caught up elsewhere.

The chaos was compounded by the fact that the army’s Gaza Division, which has responsibility for that area, had been overrun by terrorists and was unable to provide soldiers with intelligence, including information on how many terrorists were inside the kibbutz.

During the onslaught, some 24 different Israeli units were involved in battling Hamas in Kfar Aza, and there was little coordination between them until the overnight hours between October 7 and 8.

The probe found that clearing the community of terrorists took nearly three days. Additionally, there were significant delays in helping evacuate civilians from Kfar Aza, an operation that only properly began late at night on October 7.

Some 250 Hamas terrorists invaded Kfar Aza on October 7. These comprised 120-165 members of Hamas’s elite Nukhba force, and 80 additional Hamas operatives, members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and unaffiliated Palestinians.

Over 150 terrorists were ultimately killed by Israeli forces in the kibbutz and adjacent areas, and three were captured alive. A fourth terrorist involved in the onslaught was later nabbed during the ground offensive in Gaza.

The timeline of the attack

According to the IDF’s investigation, the Hamas assault on Kfar Aza began shortly before 7 a.m. on October 7, but would only end in the afternoon hours of October 10 when the final terrorist remaining in the kibbutz was killed.

Nukhba force terrorists from the Daraj-Tuffah and Sheikh Radwan battalions in Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade began their final preparations for the invasion and massacre late October 6, sometime after 9 p.m. They would begin the first wave of the attack in the early morning. Other Hamas terrorists were alerted once the attack was underway.

At 5:30 a.m. on October 7, Israeli troops of the Golani Brigade’s 13th Battalion and 7th Armored Brigade’s 77th Battalion, stationed in the area between Be’eri and Mefalsim — Kfar Aza is located between the two — took their stations at four positions along the Gaza border in a shift change. The Hamas onslaught began an hour later.

Amid an initial barrage of around 1,000 rockets — which began at 6:29 a.m. — largely aimed at Israeli military posts, Hamas terrorists broke through 114 locations along Israel’s border barrier. One breach of the fence, at 6:43 a.m., was used by the terrorists to reach Kfar Aza.

Moments earlier, at 6:42 a.m., six Hamas terrorists on three paragliders landed in the kibbutz. They were able to fly over the border under the cover of the massive rocket fire.

Roee Idan, 43, a photographer for the Ynet news site, filmed the paragliders flying toward him. He was murdered a short while later, as was his wife Smadar, in their home. One of their children, Avigail, then 3, was abducted to Gaza and later released.

At 6:45 a.m., three IDF vehicles on patrol were instructed to reach Kfar Aza during the attack. One attempted to reach the kibbutz but was attacked en route, while the other two wound up fighting terrorists in Sderot instead, after also coming under fire.

At 6:50 a.m., Hamas terrorists managed to breach two entrances to Kfar Aza, one next to the kibbutz’s solar farm in the north and the second at the community’s new neighborhoods in the southwest.

At each entrance, a pickup truck arrived with several terrorists. The pickup that entered from the solar farm entrance drove into the kibbutz and dropped off terrorists in the southern neighborhood, while the second dropped off terrorists in the new neighborhoods.

Additional Hamas terrorists arrived on motorbikes. By this point, at around 7 a.m., there were 50-80 terrorists in Kfar Aza.

At 7:01 a.m., one of the IDF tanks stationed at a post north of Kfar Aza was instructed by a regional company commander to reach the community. The tank managed to position itself outside the community at 7:25 a.m. and open fire on terrorists who were approaching the area. The tank did not enter the kibbutz, as at 10:20 a.m. the soldiers’ direct company commander instructed it to leave and assist another force elsewhere. The regional commander had been killed.

Kfar Aza’s local security team, which had 14 members that morning, all headed for the kibbutz armory, located in the center of the community. All but one managed to reach their weapons that were being stored there.

The security team battled Hamas terrorists around the armory until around 8:10 a.m., before it stopped functioning. Seven of the 14 members were killed, and an eighth was wounded. Among the seven dead was Ofir Libstein, who was also the head of the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council.

Only at 7:34 a.m. was a first text message sent to residents warning them of a terrorist infiltration. The person normally responsible for the emergency messages, Dorit Wertheim, was killed at 7:28 a.m.

By 8 a.m., some 150 Hamas terrorists were inside the kibbutz.

At 8:15 a.m., the first group of 18 troops from Golani’s 13th Battalion were instructed to reach Kfar Aza. They entered the community at 8:33 a.m.

Up to that point, at around 8:30 a.m., Hamas terrorists had murdered 37 people in the community, including the seven local security officers.

The Golani troops, in a Namer armored personnel carrier (APC), breached one of the gates of the community and reached the southern neighborhood. They responded to WhatsApp messages from resident Erez Yitzken, who was wounded after Hamas terrorists set off a bomb outside his bomb shelter and opened fire on him.

A short while later, the soldiers met up with Brig. Gen. Yisrael Shomer, the then-commander of the 146th Reserve Division and a resident of Kfar Aza, who set out to defend his home armed with just a knife. (Shomer had called IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi as the attack began earlier in the morning and told him what he saw.)

The troops began to search homes in the southern neighborhoods, with several exchanges of fire with terrorists.

At 8:40 a.m., a group of three troops entered Kfar Aza, heading for the new neighborhoods in the southwest. And at 9:44 a.m. another group of five security personnel, from the police and IDF, entered the community and tried to reach the “young generation” neighborhood, where they encountered several terrorists, before disengaging.

At 9:50, more Hamas terrorists managed to breach the Kfar Aza security fence near the “young generation” neighborhood, in the northwest and began to abduct civilians.

By 10 a.m., some 250 Hamas terrorists were in the kibbutz. Facing them were just some 30 security personnel.

At 10:20 a.m., police officers were battling terrorists at the main entrance to Kfar Aza, in the southeast, while on the other side of the community, in the “young generation” neighborhood, Hamas members were walking around freely with no resistance.

Some 25 members of the elite Sayeret Matkal and Duvdevan commando units entered Kfar Aza together at 10:34 a.m., although without any coordination. The Duvdevan troops had arrived from the West Bank.

At 10:35 a.m., one Duvdevan soldier was killed and another five were wounded in an exchange of fire between buildings, one of whom would die around a year later. At 10:39 a.m., four Sayeret Matkal soldiers were killed after a terrorist opened fire on them from one of the homes.

By 10:45 a.m, additional forces from the IDF’s Maglan unit, Golani, and police entered Kfar Aza. However, none of them were aware of the other forces inside the community, as everything was being done without any formal command and control.

At 11 a.m., the then-commander of the 98th Division, Maj. Gen. Dan Goldfus, arrived in Kfar Aza, before leaving to check on other nearby towns. He also spoke with Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, and tried to take command of the area alongside the chief of the Commando Brigade, Col. Omer Cohen. The efforts to establish command and control had little effect on the outcome of the battle at this stage.

Additional police forces arrived at 11:24 a.m. and 11:42 a.m., including a team led by the brother of now-released hostage Emily Damari, who lived in Kfar Aza.

The police team attempted to reach the “young generation” neighborhood at 11:46 a.m., before encountering a group of terrorists. A larger group of 53 Duvdevan soldiers also joined at 11:48 a.m.

Between 8:30 a.m. — when the first troops entered Kfar Aza — and 12 p.m., another 18 residents were killed. All 19 kidnappings took place between 10:30 a.m. and noon.

Additional troops continued to arrive at Kfar Aza over the following hours, the vast majority of them at their own initiative, reaching a total of 765 Israeli forces in the community by 6:30 p.m. Among them was the commander of the 13th Battalion, Lt. Col. Tomer Grinberg, who arrived with troops at 1:52 p.m. after fighting near the nearby community of Sa’ad. Grinberg would later be killed in the Gaza Strip during the ground offensive.

The first Israeli troops to reach the “young generation” neighborhood did so only at 12:50 p.m. after the kidnappings had concluded. The troops had been stuck fighting elsewhere in the kibbutz.

Fighting continued over the following hours, as troops scanned the buildings in the neighborhood.

At 5:52 p.m., troops exchanged fire with a group of terrorists driving toward them in a vehicle. It was later found that one person in the car, Eliyahu Orgad, was being abducted by those terrorists. He was killed in the exchange of fire.

At 6 p.m. three tanks entered Kfar Aza, with some 50-100 terrorists still in the kibbutz. Between 12 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., seven residents were murdered, and eight security personnel were killed.

Israeli Air Force drones and helicopters at the same time were carrying out several airstrikes in the area, mostly along the kibbutz’s security perimeter.

As night fell, some 1,000 Israeli troops were inside Kfar Aza. Still, around 50 terrorists remained, barricading themselves in homes. It remains unclear why they remained in the kibbutz, instead of trying to flee.

Only by 11 p.m. did the IDF begin an organized evacuation of residents from Kfar Aza, as it worked to get an accurate picture of the civilian situation there.

In one incident at around 3:20 a.m. on October 8, residents Nadav Alon and Hadar Haniya, who were holed up in the safe room in the “young generation” neighborhood for hours, decided it was safe to leave when they heard security forces nearby. Alon approached the soldiers, who suspected he might be a terrorist. One soldier kicked him in the chest and yelled “Terrorist, terrorist.” Then, another fired a shot that hit the soldier who kicked him, wounding the soldier in the leg. After noticing Haniya, the soldiers realized they were both civilians. Nobody was killed in this incident.

Also during the night between October 7 and 8, the IDF was dividing the community up among units, making the fighting more organized.

There were sporadic exchanges of fire in the kibbutz during the night, as well as throughout Sunday and on Monday. An officer in the Givati Brigade was killed late Sunday in one exchange of fire with terrorists.

By Monday morning, October 9, there were 10-20 terrorists still in the kibbutz. At 11:15 a.m., a soldier with the Nahal Brigade was killed in an exchange of fire.

The last exchange of fire took place at 5 p.m. on October 10. Troops killed an already wounded Hamas terrorist who was hiding out in the kibbutz’s new neighborhood. At the same time, the military was escorting journalists to see the destruction in the community.

The bodies of 101 terrorists were located in the kibbutz, and another 50 were found outside. Those killed outside Kfar Aza were mostly targeted from the air by the IAF drones and helicopters.