We will repeat the October 7 attack time and again until Israel is annihilated, says Hamas official Ghazi Hamad

1 November 2023, 19:12

Hamas will carry out attacks over and over again "until Israel is annihilated", one of the group's officials has warned.

Ghazi Hamad vowed to keep carrying out attacks similar to October 7 until Israel is completely destroyed, saying it had "no place on our land".

The official said Hamas "must teach Israel a lesson" and intended to do so "again and again".

Hamas launched a brutal attack during Nova music festival - which coincided with the Jewish festival of Simchat Torah - with at least 260 killed and several kidnapped after they stormed the site.

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"We will repeat the October 7 attack time and again until Israel is annihilated," Hamad told Memri, a research organisation based in the US.

"We are victims - everything we do is justified."

He continued: "Israel is a country that has no place on our (Palestine’s) land.

"That nation must go because it poses a military and political threat to the security of the Arab and Islamic countries and must be destroyed."

Hamad went on to say: "There will be a second, third, and fourth because we have the will, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight."

Responding to the comments, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly tweeted: "How can there be peace when Hamas are committed to the eradication of Israel?

"This is an official from Hamas committing to repeat the atrocities from 07/10 again and again."

In recent days, Israeli troops have advanced toward the outskirts of Gaza City from the north and east.

Officials say Hamas' military infrastructure, including hundreds of miles of tunnels, is concentrated in the city, which was home to some 650,000 people before the war.

Israel has vowed to crush Hamas' ability to govern Gaza or threaten it, while also saying it does not plan to reoccupy the territory, from which it withdrew soldiers and settlers in 2005. But it has said little about who would govern Gaza afterwards.