Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service coming to you live from London.

I'm Julia Morica.

It's a day of ceremonies in Israel in memory of the nearly 1,200 people killed and 250 taken

hostage by Hamas in the attacks launched from Gaza exactly a year ago. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited a monument

for victims of the attack in Jerusalem. He said the Israeli people would not rest

until the hostages were brought back. On this day, in this place, and in many places in our country, we remember our dead,

our hostages whom we are obligated to bring back,

and our heroes, who fell in defense of the homeland and the country.

We went through a terrible massacre a year ago and we stood up as a people like a lion.

This Tel Aviv resident said she was struggling to believe that the conflict was still going on.

I think it started like a couple days ago

realizing we're coming up on the one-year mark and yeah I just same as a year ago

feeling just very heavy just in disbelief that this is still our reality.

Well a year ago Israel stated its determination to destroy Hamas and release the

hostages but 97 people are still being held it's Hamas and

Hamas,

Hamaas designated as a terror organization by many Western governments

has even in the last few hours shown it can still fire

rockets into Israel. The wider impact on the region since October the 7th has been

huge. Israel's assault on Gaza has led to more than 41,000 deaths, according to the Hamas-run

health ministry. In addition to that, thousands of homes have been destroyed, and nearly 2 million

people, the vast majority of the population have been

...