It took most of a day for Israeli soldiers to arrive as people tried to hide from Hamas terrorists on Saturday. Here’s what the evidence shows about the response to some of the deadliest attacks.
[…]“Where is the army,” Amit Man, 22, texted her family after hiding from Hamas attackers for five hours, before she was shot and killed. Others hid in the woods, barricaded themselves in safe rooms and waited for as many as 26 hours for help to arrive.
The slow response of Israeli forces on Saturday, a national holiday, gave Hamas terrorists many hours to infiltrate more than 20 towns outside of Gaza, where they killed at least 1,200 people and took an estimated 150 hostages.
Israeli officials declined to answer questions about the timing of their response to the attacks. Here’s what we know about the timeline of some of the deadliest events and the official response, based on interviews with survivors and their family members, and an analysis of photos and video.