Swords of Iron: Here is what happened on days 3, 4 and 5

Hungary is currently evacuating 110 more people from Israel, bringing the total number of people it has brought out of the country to 325 including 46 children, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said in a Facebook post on Monday.

He said that 15 of the 325 evacuees were foreign citizens, among them Israeli, Swedish, Austrian, German, British and Portuguese nationals. Szijjarto said the latest flight, the third it has organized, was currently en route to Budapest.

Some 300,000 IDF reservists will be called up in total to fight in Operation Swords of Iron, the IDF announced on Monday.

This is the largest number in the history of the IDF, the spokesperson added. 

Israel is currently waging an ongoing war against Hamas terrorists who have fired thousands of rockets and infiltrated the country since Saturday morning. 

Elite special forces Shaldag Unit Commander IDF Lt. Col. "B"  who was on the front of the fighting to retake the Gaza corridor villages invaded by Hamas from the first moments Saturday morning provided his narrative moment to moment for the first time on Monday. 

B said he was awoken at 7:00 a.m. Saturday morning from his parents' house for the Simchat Torah holiday and informed about the invasion.

This was about 30 minutes after the invasion had started.

He immediately held a virtual conference of commanders and told them "war has started. Bring everyone." B stated that his troops fought "with lightning in their eyes."

Next, B started to coordinate with his planning officers about the exact prioritization of his units' missions.

Soon after, he and some other units were on helicopters on their way to the Gaza corridor, simultaneously reaching out to more units to head south.

The first Shaldag special forces units, with 12 fighters, arrived at Kibbutz Be'eri at 8:30 a.m.

They immediately started to fight to retake the Kibbutz.

There was significant fire from Hamas on the special forces from the start, with some immediate deaths and wounded special forces personnel, and they realized that the Kibbutz was full of terrorists.

After reorganizing and five hours of fighting, they had killed 20 Hamas terrorists.

Regarding B, when he arrived at Re'im and the IDF's divisional headquarters, it was still under Hamas' control.

There was a massive exchange of fire and no IDF forces were there since they had left earlier to be first responders to defend the border communities being invaded (they had killed some terrorists whose bodies were still strewn on the ground.)
 
B put in place a process to locate and isolate the main terror force occupying the IDF's base.

Next, his forces went after the Hamas forces. Immediately around five of his special forces soldiers were wounded. Some were rescued and evacuated while other soldiers continued fighting in real-time. 

Eventually, B's forces successfully neutralized the main group.

After that, they started systematically patrolling all parts of the base to eliminate all remaining pockets of terrorists there, including using heavier weaponry as it became available.
 
It was not until around 6:30 p.m. Saturday that the IDF divisional base was fully retaken.

Over the course of the day, all of the Shaldag was on its way by helicopters, cars, or even on foot.

By 2:00 a.m. Sunday, many Shaldag reservists had also shown up, bringing the special forces numbers to 200 (along with much larger numbers of regular troops, paratroopers, and other special forces.)

B noted that around five of his forces were killed and around 15 wounded, including his top deputy.

His forces have also been instrumental in taking and securing Kfar Aza, while working with the Shin Bet to catch Hamas terrorists in hiding or trying to sneak through the border into Israel.

'I have seen the catastrophe with my own eyes'

The special forces commander said that criticism of the IDF's being surprised could wait for later, but that right now the focus must be forward-looking.

"I have seen the catastrophe with my own eyes. But soldiers here are fighting. My forces and the entire IDF. We are not worrying about our own lives, but only about saving civilians. There is no hesitation. Where there are civilians, we dash forward. From the moment I woke up Saturday at 7:00 a.m. until now," he said.

He added that many soldiers who were not at a specific spot that they would expected to be at were attacked on their way. Also, some of the top commanders who have been killed or wounded were off duty and jumped right into the fray wherever it was, often without their full complement of forces.

B told a story about one off-duty commander who ran off toward where he thought the fighting was, happened to find a group of soldiers who were being trained to run basic training sources and commandeered them to successfully clean Urim of terrorists and save a group of female soldiers who were trapped and surrounded.

He said the fighting was fierce and everywhere, house to house and at the closest range one could imagine.

"The focus is the next civilian we need to save, and the next terrorist we need to kill...We will win this war," concluded B.

Thailand's foreign ministry on Monday said 12 Thai nationals had been killed in unrest in Israel, plus 11 more kidnapped and eight injured.

"We are working to help all Thai citizens in Israel," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Kanchana Patarachoke told reporters.

Spanish Acting Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said on Monday that the Hamas assault on Israel from the Gaza strip qualified as "terrorism."

"Without a doubt, we are talking about terrorism and terrorist actions," he said in an interview with Spanish radio Onda Cero.

He said his services would help Spanish nationals who are in Israel and wish to return to Spain.

IDF soldiers prevented a terrorist from infiltrating the Zikim Training Base in southern Israel on Monday, the IDF announced.

No casualties were reported by the IDF.

The bodies of two Israeli tourists murdered on Sunday in Alexandria, Egypt have been flown back to Israel, the Israel Air Force announced on Monday.

Some 17 Israelis who were in the city at the time have also returned. 

The IDF has opened an investigation into a suspected hostage situation in Sderot following infiltration of the town by Hamas terrorists. 

This is a developing story. 

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, was in the Kirya, Tel Aviv on Sunday night to oversee the Israel Air Force's attack on a Hamas operational center located inside a mosque in Jabaliya. The IDF has carried out over 1,000 air strikes on Gaza since Operation Swords of Iron began. 

Halevi held a situation assessment for the continued offensive against terrorists in the Gaza Strip with the commanders and personnel of the Kirya.

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, was in the Kirya, Tel Aviv on Sunday night to oversee the Israel Air Force's attack on a Hamas operational center located inside a mosque in Jabaliya. The IDF has carried out over 1,000 air strikes on Gaza since Operation Swords of Iron began. 

Halevi held a situation assessment for the continued offensive against terrorists in the Gaza Strip with the commanders and personnel of the Kirya.