NPR News

Photos: A look back at the year since Oct. 7

By NPR Staff

Published October 7, 2024 at 3:22 PM CDT

A Palestinian girl carries a child through the rubble of houses destroyed by Israeli bombardment in Gaza City on March 3, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Hamas movement.

This story is a part of an NPR series reflecting on Oct. 7, a year of war and how it has changed life across Israel, the Gaza Strip, the region and the world.

NPR journalists have spent the past year witnessing, capturing and documenting the suffering and pain that war has inflicted on people in the Gaza Strip, Israel, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.

For Israelis, it began when Hamas militants stormed out of the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7 last year, attacking soldiers, families in their homes and a rave packed with young people. The attacks killed around 1,200 people and took 250 hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

Israelis have been divided since: Many have spent the past year in rallies demanding a cease-fire that frees the hostages. Others have pressed their government to continue fighting Hamas, even blocking aid crossing into Gaza.

In Gaza, nothing looks the same a year into the war. Among the more than 41,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire this past year are hundreds of families, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. More than half of those killed are women and children. Around 100,000 others in Gaza have been wounded, thousands of them children who have lost limbs.

A year on, nearly everyone in Gaza is displaced, huddling in bombed out schools and under makeshift tents without electricity, running water or safety.

Below is a collection of moments from the past 365 days of this war, captured by NPR photographers and others across the region.

Israeli soldiers prepare and fire mortars from inside Israel into Gaza, backing up troops near the Maghazi refugee camp, where three attacks occurred that killed a combined 21 Israeli soldiers, on Jan. 22.

Men working with a search and recovery team from the organization Zaka look for human remains in Kibbutz Be'eri, in Israel on Oct. 20, 2023.

Demonstrators gather in Tel Aviv to protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and to call for the release of hostages still held in Gaza, on Feb. 24.

Israeli soldiers carry the casket of reservist Elkana Yehuda Sfez, who was killed in combat in Gaza, during his funeral at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem, on Jan. 23.

Two of Jameel Amori's sons wer killed in the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. She sits among memories, including some superimposed images of the three of them together, with a wistful backdrop of the Dome of the Rock holy site in Jerusalem.

Palestinians among the rubble of destroyed buildings at the Maghazi refugee camp in southern Gaza Strip, on Jan. 21.

Israeli protesters attempt to block the road as aid trucks cross into the Gaza Strip, as Israeli border police watch over them, at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, southern Israel, Jan. 29.

A nurse cares for babies born prematurely at the Emirati Hospital in Rafah, Gaza Strip, on March 8. Doctors there report numerous babies have died of malnutrition-related causes.

Israeli soldiers practice evacuating wounded people with a helicopter during a military drill in northern Israel, in preparation for a potential escalation in the conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, on Feb. 20.

Sigal Manzuri embraces a friend of one of her daughters, Norelle, 25, and Roya, 22, who were killed on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked the Nova music festival in southern Israel during a commemoration event at the site of the festival, on Nov. 28, 2023. Behind them are photos of people taken captive and killed by Hamas militants during their rampage through the festival.

A Palestinian fighter in the occupied West Bank's Jenin refugee camp shares a photo of a Palestinian he says was killed by the Israeli military. He placed the man’s photo on his gun as a reminder.

Palestinians mourn relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, at a hospital in the Gaza town of Deir al-Balah, on Oct. 1, 2024.

First responders at the site of a rocket strike that hit a residential building in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Oct. 27, 2023.

Malkiel Bar-Chai holds his daughter in the outpost settlement of Evyatar, which had recently received authorization from Israel, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on July 18.

People pray over the body of a person killed in an Israeli airstrike on a U.N.-run school in Nuseirat, central Gaza, on Sept. 12. The U.N. says hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in U.N. schools that have been turned into shelters for tens of thousands of families displaced across the Gaza Strip.

A Palestinian child cries among children waiting for food prepared by volunteers for Palestinian families who fled to southern Gaza due to Israeli attacks, in Rafah, Gaza Strip, on Feb. 10.

Humanitarian aid falls from planes over northern Gaza as seen from Israel's southern border with the Gaza Strip on March 7.

Palestinian farmer Ayoub Abu Hejleh is reunited with his family after being detained for hours by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank in November 2023.

Tanks and troops amassed in northern Israel in preparation for a ground invasion of Lebanon, on Sept. 30.

Israelis shelter on the highway during a massive missile barrage from Iran on Tuesday Oct. 1.

A man surveys the destruction caused by an Israeli airstrike close to a residential area in the Bekaa Valley, in central Lebanon, in September.

Photo editing by Mhari Shaw and JuliAnna Patino. Introduction by Aya Batrawy.