Anniversary Grief

Here's the rewritten story.

Three years after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and seized 251 hostages, Israelis gathered Wednesday across southern Israel, the Associated Press reported.

Near Kibbutz Reim, where gunmen overran the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, families gathered around photographs of relatives who died there, NPR reported. At 6:29 a.m., survivors hugged, the exact moment the first rockets fell three years earlier, as explosions sounded from nearby Gaza, according to CBC News. Hundreds paid respects. More than 350 people were killed in and around the festival grounds, NPR said.

This is the first anniversary since every hostage, living or dead, has been returned, NPR reported. Mourners called it a new stage of grief. Elkana Bohbot was abducted from the festival and held for 738 days, he told the Associated Press. Most of it underground, in a tunnel, with little food. His wife gave birth in August to a daughter, fulfilling a promise he made to himself in captivity.

In Gaza, the anniversary brought another day of hardship. More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to figures from Gaza's Health Ministry cited by the Associated Press. Hamas runs the ministry. Still, the United Nations and independent experts widely consider its count reliable. The Guardian reported the death toll has climbed by about 1,400 people in the year since a ceasefire took hold.

Most of Gaza's roughly two million residents remain displaced, many in tent camps within ruined neighborhoods, the Associated Press reported. Ahmed Ishtaiwi, a 43-year-old driver and mechanic living in a tent near Deir al-Balah, told the Guardian he keeps six plastic chairs because they remind him of breakfasts in the garden of his destroyed home in Beit Lahiya.

Despite a ceasefire reached roughly a year ago, Israeli strikes haven't let up, continuing almost daily, NPR and the Guardian both reported. Israeli forces still control more than half the territory. Gaza medics said at least two Palestinians were killed Wednesday in airstrikes in Beit Lahiya and Khan Younis, the Guardian reported. Israel said it hit militants.

Beyond Gaza, the war reshaped the wider region, according to NPR. Israeli troops hold ground in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah, which began firing on Israel in 2023 in support of Hamas, while Iran and the United States remain locked in a separate confrontation that has reached Gulf Arab states.

Anya Davitashili lost her 25-year-old son, Sean, at the festival. "Every morning, you wake up and there is just endless missing," she told NPR.