Senior IDF and security officials reportedly held an assessment hours before the start of Hamas’s brutal onslaught on southern Israel on Saturday morning, having received “weak scraps” of information that something was afoot, but concluded that the activity in Gaza was likely a drill.

In response to the reports, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had not received any intelligence warnings from the security establishment before the start of the devastating mass Hamas infiltration, in which some 1,300 people were killed as terrorists rampaged across communities in southern Israel.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was updated at exactly 06:29 on Saturday, and not before, upon the outbreak of the fighting,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement. “He immediately went to the Kirya [military headquarters in Tel Aviv], held an assessment of the situation and convened the Security Cabinet.”