Israel Maps Show Where Hamas Is Launching Rocket Strikes

Hamas militants are using rockets and attack drones to strike across Israel as new maps show the Palestinian group’s main targets heading into the sixth day of escalated violence in the Middle East.

Palestinian militant groups are “now relying on rocket barrages and attack drones” to hit northern and southern Israeli towns, the Washington D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said on Wednesday. Rockets fired from Gaza reached the northern city of Haifa, and “multiple barrages” struck Tel Aviv, it added.

Saturday marked the start of a large-scale land, air and sea attack on Israel by Hamas fighters, with many quickly moving through Israeli villages close to the Gaza Strip, killing civilians and taking hostages back into the Palestinian enclave. It was the deadliest attack by Palestinian militants in Israel’s history.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country is “at war,” and the military has called up 360,000 army reservists as it prepares for a likely ground offensive into the territory, which has an estimated population of around 2.3 million.

Smoke billows from a fire that broke out after a rocket attack from Gaza in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, on October 11, 2023. Hamas militants are using rockets and attack drones to strike across Israel as new maps show the Palestinian group’s main targets heading into the sixth day of escalated violence in the Middle East. RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images

Israel’s military said it has now secured its border with Gaza and had also imposed a siege on the territory, cutting off supplies of food, fuel, electricity and medicine as it continues to carry out its intensive bombing campaign.

Maps produced by the ISW, accurate as of 3 p.m. ET on Wednesday, show rocket attacks on Israeli villages bordering the entirety of Gaza, with strikes reported to the south, east and north of the territory. Hamas also launched one-way attack drones from eastern Gaza, the ISW said, and a surface-to-surface missile at the southern Israeli city of Be’er Sheva.

Fears have also grown about a new front opening up on the northern Israeli border with Lebanon after several deaths and an exchange of fire between the Israeli military and Hezbollah.

Supported by Iran and Syria, the Lebanese group Hezbollah is “the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor,” U.S. think tank the Center for International and Strategic Studies has previously said. Armed with small, unguided surface-to-surface rockets, the “sheer number” of rockets at Hezbollah’s disposal “make them effective weapons of terror,” the think tank said in 2021.

Hamas has its own cache of weapons, and the Palestinian group has been stockpiling weapons for some time, Fabian Hinz, research fellow for defense and military analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, previously told Newsweek.

Hamas originally started off with smuggled artillery rockets, and has domestically mass-produced types—with Iran’s assistance—that do not closely resemble any other design, Hinz said. Hamas also seems to have developed its own suicide and reconnaissance drones, as well as using Iranian-made uncrewed vehicles, he added.

On Thursday, representatives for Hamas said that the group had launched new rocket barrages in southern Israel, including on the city of Ashkelon and further north in Tel Aviv. Hamas targeted several Israeli villages close to the border with Gaza, the group added.

Israel’s military said on Thursday that it had launched an “extensive attack” on Hamas targets across the Palestinian enclave.

The Israeli air force conducted “a wave of strikes targeting the Nukhba elite forces” making up part of Hamas’ ranks, the Israeli military said in a separate statement on Thursday. The Nukhba fighters were “one of the leading forces” that crossed the border in the weekend attack, the air force said.