Warning: This article contains videos that may be disturbing to some viewers
Disturbing social media footage has emerged appearing to show women being taken hostage by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
It comes as at least 200 Israelis have been reported killed and 1100 wounded in gunbattles raging in more than 20 locations inside Israel. In Gaza, health officials reported more than 230 people killed and 1600 wounded in retaliatory attacks.
In one of the videos, geolocated by CNN to a neighbourhood in Gaza, a barefoot woman is pulled from the trunk of a Jeep by a gunman and then forced into the backseat of the car. Her face is bleeding, and her wrists appear to be cabled tied.
Another video appears to show an elderly Israeli woman being driven into Gaza by golf buggy as a captive.
Another video shows over a hundred Israelis frantically fleeing Gaza through a field.
Another video has emerged showing the shocking moment an Israeli student was abducted by Hamas fighters in southern Israel.
The family of Noa Argamani, 25, shared the shocking footage showing her sitting on the back of a motorcycle screaming "Don't kill me! No, no, no" with her arms stretched out towards her boyfriend who is also reportedly missing.
The footage also appears to show her boyfriend being held by two Hamas fighters as the motorcycle speeds off. The pair were in the south of Israel to attend a music festival.
Professor of international law at the University of Waikato Alexander Gillespie told Newshub taking civilians hostage is illegal in international law and a "clear mark of terrorism".
"War crimes are already being committed. Taking civilians hostage and indiscriminate attacks against civilian areas (as in, the rocket attacks) are clear crimes," Gillespie said.
"These can be living soldiers and civilians, as well as the bodies of the dead. Whether Israel will negotiate or not is unknown, but their practice is not to – as to negotiate makes you beholden to similar events in the future," he said.
Hamas has also published footage onto X of its fighters training to use motorised hang gliders to infiltrate southern Israel.
New Zealand has called for an end to the violence.
"Aotearoa New Zealand is deeply concerned at the outbreak of conflict between Israel and Gaza," Nanaia Mahuta said on X.
"We call for the immediate cessation of violence. The protection of all civilians, and upholding of international humanitarian law is essential."
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed the "enemy will pay a price the type of which it has never known".
"We are in a war and we will win it," Netanyahu said.
But Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the assault that began in Gaza would spread to the West Bank and Jerusalem.
"This was the morning of defeat and humiliation upon our enemy, its soldiers and its settlers," he said in a speech.
"What happened reveals the greatness of our preparation. What happened today reveals the weakness of the enemy."
Reuters reports bodies of Israeli civilians lay strewn across a highway, surrounded by broken glass in Sderot, in southern Israel near Gaza. A woman and a man were sprawled out dead across the front seats of a car. A military vehicle drove past the bodies of another woman and a man in a pool of blood behind another car.
"I went out, I saw loads of bodies of terrorists, civilians, cars shot up. A sea of bodies, inside Sderot along the road, other places, loads of bodies," Shlomi from Sderot told Reuters.
