On the eve of 7 October, Katz says 4,000 of 6,000 attackers are dead and 2,000 are not

On the eve of the third anniversary of the Hamas-led attack, Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel had killed 4,000 of the 6,000 people he said crossed the border on 7 October 2023, and that 2,000 were still alive. The figures were presented to the security cabinet on Sunday night by Major General Shlomi Binder, head of military intelligence. Binder's line, quoted by the Jewish Chronicle, was that the remaining 2,000 would be reached. Katz said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered the military and the other agencies to pursue everyone who took part, "from the senior ranks to the junior ranks".

The anniversary itself falls on Wednesday. Secretary-General António Guterres marked the eve in a message dated 6 October. He said Hamas and other armed groups had killed more than 1,200 people on the day, deliberately targeting civilians in homes, communities and at a music festival, and had abducted 251 people, including women, children and the elderly. He said the hostages were subjected to torture, cruel treatment and sexual violence. Ambassador Mike Waltz, speaking at a UN event in New York, said this was the first 7 October commemoration at which every hostage was out: the living returned, the dead buried. He pointed to Security Council resolution 2803, passed 13-0, as the framework for a Gaza without Hamas rule, demilitarisation, an international stabilisation force and reconstruction.

The ceasefire that resolution sits under is about a year old and has not produced the disarmament or the withdrawal the text describes. Reuters reported that Israeli strikes on Tuesday killed at least two people in Gaza, one near al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. The military said the strikes targeted militants. Gaza health officials say about 1,400 people have been killed by Israeli fire since the ceasefire, on top of more than 74,000 during the war. Israel says four of its soldiers have been killed by militants in Gaza over the same period. Hamas denies it is rearming and accuses Israel of breaking the deal. Israel says Hamas is rearming and firing in violation of it.

Katz's 6,000 and 4,000 are Israeli intelligence figures, not a Hamas order of battle and not a count the UN has adopted. They do a specific piece of political work on the eve of the anniversary and ahead of an Israeli election. Netanyahu told the cabinet that Hamas, because it is weak, will try to use what force it has left to influence that vote. The National Security Council issued a travel advisory warning of a higher threat to Israelis and Jews abroad, and asked people not to post travel plans or join large gatherings. If Binder's remaining 2,000 are the operational target, the public claim is that two-thirds of the crossing force is already dead. The part of that claim nobody outside the cabinet can check is the denominator. Six thousand is the number Binder brought. It has not been matched to a name list.

Guterres closed by urging the parties to carry out the ceasefire commitments and move to the next phase. Waltz treated the hostage file as closed and the Iranian proxy network as broken. Katz treated the attacker file as two-thirds closed. Those three statements, issued within a day of each other, are the official positions going into Wednesday morning. The unverified piece in the middle of them is Binder's 2,000.