Israel marks three years since 7 October as strikes in Gaza kill two
Ceremonies began at 6:29am at the Nova site, where wire reports put the 2023 death toll at 348. Gaza's health ministry says more than 74,000 people have been killed in the war, and more than 1,400 since the October 2025 ceasefire. Al-Shifa reported two dead in an overnight strike.
Re'im3 min read
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Israel marked three years since the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023 on Wednesday, and the morning did not stay inside the memorial grounds. At the Nova festival site near Re'im, families bowed their heads at 6:29am, the minute the attack began. Portraits stood with flowers under them. Across the fence, bangs were audible from Gaza. Palestinian officials reported two people killed in Israeli strikes. Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City recorded both deaths from an overnight strike, and Gaza's civil defence named one of the dead as a volunteer with the rescue service.
The 2023 toll on the Israeli side is the figure ceremonies are built around. Militants killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages into Gaza. At Nova, the figure used in the wire reports of Wednesday's ceremony is 348 killed. The hostages' file is no longer the file of October 2023: most of the living were released in the exchanges that followed, and the remainder are the unresolved centre of every political speech this week.
The Gaza figures, and whose they are
Gaza's health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run administration, says more than 74,000 people have been killed in the territory since the war began. The ministry does not separate civilians from fighters. It says about half of the dead were women and children. UN agencies and independent reviewers have treated the ministry's overall counts as broadly usable in earlier phases of the war. That is a statement about past audits, not a certificate for every name in the current total.
A second figure is the one that measures the ceasefire. More than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the October 2025 truce, the same health authorities say. The truce was meant to stop the war. It has not stopped strikes, and it has not produced the recovery the text promised. António Guterres, in a message dated 6 October, called the 2023 attack abhorrent, cited more than 1,200 killed and 251 taken, and said the ceasefire had brought some relief without security, adequate aid, or a credible path to recovery. He asked the parties to carry out their commitments and move to the next phase of the plan.
What the political calendar is doing with the date
The anniversary falls weeks before an Israeli election, and both the government and its opponents are using the day. Benjamin Netanyahu has said there will be no Hamas rule in Gaza. Israel Katz, the defence minister, said the military has killed 4,000 militants who took part in the 7 October attacks. That claim is a count of fighters the army says it has identified and killed over three years, not a count of people killed on Wednesday. President Isaac Herzog has said the country should investigate the failures of 2023 without bias. The argument over a state commission of inquiry is unresolved, which is why families at Nova are still asking for one.
The wider map of the war is part of the third-year record, and it is not confined to Gaza. Israeli forces hold ground in Syria and in Lebanon, where more than 300,000 people remain displaced on the Lebanese side. The United States joined Israel in two rounds of strikes on Iran's military and nuclear sites. Those campaigns are not the subject of the Nova ceremony. They are the reason the 6:29 minute of silence now sits inside a regional war rather than a single-front one.
The two deaths on the morning of the memorial
Wednesday's strikes are the fact that keeps the anniversary from being only a memorial story. Two dead, one of them a civil defence volunteer, reported by Al-Shifa and by the rescue service, with the sound of the strikes reaching the families at Nova. No Israeli statement in the morning reports named the targets. No Gaza statement in those same reports claimed a larger toll for the overnight strike. The day's addition to the post-ceasefire count of more than 1,400 is two, unless later hospital lists add names.
The open question is the one Guterres put in institutional language and the ceremonies put in personal language. The ceasefire of October 2025 has not produced a second phase. Hostages and remains are still a political instrument. Gaza's dead are past 74,000 on the ministry's books. And on the morning built to mark 6:29, the war added two more names within earshot of the portraits.
