A year after Hamas launched a cross-border attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7, the images of that day and its ongoing aftermath still defy belief.
No one thought they would see heavily armed Hamas gunmen going door-to-door on quiet Israeli streets or storming a crowded music festival, mowing people down for hours with no soldiers in sight.
No one thought they would see entire neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip turned into rubble-strewn wastelands, with high-rises leveled, paved roads turned to dirt and people fleeing on foot with only what they could carry. Few thought it would last this long, or claim so many lives.
Hamas’ surprise attack and the war it triggered in Gaza have brought unprecedented death, destruction and anguish to both Israelis and Palestinians. Its ripples across the Middle East have raised the specter of an even larger conflict.
Associated Press photographers have tried to capture its impact on ordinary people.
They have photographed Israelis returning to the scenes of the killings, mobilizing for war and protesting their country’s wartime leadership and its failure to return scores of hostages.
They have been there as Palestinians dig for survivors after airstrikes and as the wounded are treated on the floors of overwhelmed hospitals. They have photographed people huddling in tents and crowding around aid stations, reaching with empty pots for desperately needed food,
They have followed Palestinians from one end of Gaza to another as they flee airstrikes and evacuation orders, often traveling by foot or donkey cart with only what they can carry.
And they have been to funerals — too many funerals — on both sides.
As with all wars, civilians have paid the heaviest price. Young Israelis were killed by the hundreds at the music festival. Grandparents in their 70s and 80s were dragged into Gaza and held in tunnels, where many perished. Airstrikes killed Palestinian children in front of their parents and left thousands of orphans — some with no living relatives.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8, drawing retaliatory strikes in a cycle of escalation that has steadily worsened. In recent weeks, Israeli warplanes have pounded large areas of Lebanon, killing Hezbollah’s leader and several of his top commanders, as well as many civilians. Ground operations commenced last week.
The bombings have brought more giant plumes of smoke, more blackened craters where buildings once stood, more screaming ambulances and more people — by the hundreds of thousands — taking to the roads to flee the war’s widening vortex.
Through it all, there have been some moments of joy, however fleeting.
There were happy homecomings — on both sides — last November after more than 100 hostages were freed in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
But a year on, everyone still seems to be trapped in the violent reality unleashed in the early hours of Oct. 7, with no end in sight.