Israel is at war with Hamas

The world is calling for cease fire between Hamas and Israel.

Israel & Hamas are fighting, after the Palestinian militant group (hamas) launched surprise cross-border raids from Gaza, killing more than 1,400 people and taking hostages from Israel side.

To answer that, Israel has been pounding the Palestinian territory with  strikes which Palestinian authorities say left thousands dead. Many in the already cramped and impoverished territory are in dire need of aid.

And with Israeli widely expected to launch a ground offensive, there are fears the crisis could escalate further, drawing in Israel’s neighbors.

What happened?

Hamas  fired thousands of rockets towards Israeli towns on October 7, before breaking through the heavily fortified border fence with Israel and sending militants deep into Israeli territory. There, Hamas gunmen killed more than 1,400 people, including civilians and soldiers, and took more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli authorities, in what has been described as the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

The attacks come as surprise to the world as Israel has not faced its adversaries in street battles on its own territory since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It has also never faced a terror attack of this magnitude that has taken the lives of so many civilians. While Hamas has kidnapped Israelis before, it has never before taken dozens of hostages at once, including children and the elderly.

Hamas called the Israel respond as al-aqsa and said that it was a response to what it described as Israeli attacks on women, the desecration of the  al-Aqsa  mosque  in Jerusalem capital city of Israel and the ongoing siege of Gaza.

For more stories we will keep updating on what's happening on the ground