IDF soldiers at the Nahal Oz base not only noticed suspicious activity prior to October 7 surrounding the base, they also noticed an abrupt stop to Hamas activity days before that fated Saturday, the BBC revealed on Friday.
The report, citing Israeli families who lost loved ones in the invasion on the base on October 7, was based on alleged briefings families received from Israeli security personnel prior to the release of an official inquiry into what happened on Nahal Oz.
The BBC also spoke with survivors, as well as “seen messages from those who died, and listened to voice recordings reporting the attack as it happened.”
On top of the alarming news that soldiers on base had some understanding that something unusual was underway — not just the observer soldiers, or “tatzpitaniyot” — the report also detailed that many soldiers on base were unarmed and told to retreat rather than push forward when under attack.
In addition, Golani soldiers who were supposed to go on their regular morning patrol along the Israeli side of the Gaza border fence were told to hold off due to “a threat of anti-tank missiles,” three soldiers told the BBC.
An infantry soldier told the BBC that the sudden drop in terrorist activity in the area ahead of the attack made it feel like “there was nothing, and that was frightening us.”
“Everybody felt that something was strange. It didn’t make sense.”
Soldiers consistently said that throughout the attack, the overall feeling they got from commanders was that this was not an extraordinary occurrence. Despite this, they heard the panic in the voices of the observer soldiers as they warned about the incursion over the radio devices.
The timeline of the attack on Nahal Oz
The report goes on to draw out a rough timeline of the attack on Nahal Oz, describing a situation filled with panic and the direction of soldiers either into bunkers or out to patrols. Thousands of Hamas terrorists broke into the base and collected in its dining room that day.
First, the patrols were called off; then, rocket sirens began going off. After that, the observer soldiers began seeing Hamas terrorists closing in on the base.
“Each of the [observer soldiers] on shift at Nahal Oz witnessed between two and five breaches of the section of border fence they were responsible for monitoring,” according to one of the BBC’s sources, an observer soldier on shift that day.
Prior to the attack, soldiers were told not to worry that the IDF observation balloon on Nahal Oz base — a balloon capable of offering a “deeper view into Gaza” that was “supposed to be operational 24 hours a day” — was not working, as it would be “fixed on Sunday.”
Hamas gunmen reached the doors of the observer soldiers’ war room at 7 a.m., according to the BBC. The soldiers were sent into a more internal office, and soon after, a handful managed to go and lock themselves in the housing barracks. “Everyone else in the shield was either killed or captured by Hamas,” the BBC revealed.
The IDF was completely overwhelmed in the attack, the report claimed. “Relatives would later be told by the IDF that there were 150 gunmen to every 25 combat soldiers entering Nahal Oz that day,” the BBC report said.
Communications channels were down. Soldiers were being fired at from all directions. Backup didn’t know where to go. In short, chaos reigned.
The door to the observation soldiers’ war room came unlocked the moment the power was shut off. Hamas terrorists began shooting every which way, then set it on fire.
Several soldiers managed to climb out of the bathroom window. They were the sole survivors of the war room.
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