The former chief of Mossad, Efraim Halevy, spoke to CNN's Wolf Blitzer about the Palestinian Resistance's most recent operation against the Israeli occupation.

Halevy expressed astonishment at the suddenness and scale of the rocket attacks launched by the Palestinian Resistance throughout the day.

"We had no warning of any kind, and it was a total surprise that the war broke out this morning," said Halevy, reflecting the shock felt within Israeli intelligence circles.

The former Mossad head revealed that the barrage of rockets launched by the Resistance had exceeded all expectations.

"The number of missiles they have launched within less than 24 hours is over 3,000. This is beyond imagination from our point of view, and we didn't know they had this quantity of missiles, and we certainly didn't expect that they would be as effective as they were today," Halevy remarked.

Moreover, Halevy described the sheer volume of rockets fired by Palestinian fighters on that fateful Saturday morning as "never seen before."

The attack was unprecedented, he said, marking the first time Gaza fighters had gone deep into the occupied Palestinian territories and taken control of villages. "As an operation, it was highly successful, unfortunately. I think it was well coordinated," Halevy noted.

Halevy, moreover, claimed that the rockets were likely manufactured within the Gaza Strip and smuggled in by sea, evading Israeli detection. He suggested that Hamas may have conducted "trial training" without alerting Israeli forces to their intentions.

"We didn't have an inkling of what was going on," Halevy emphasized, underlining the surprise factor that had left Israeli intelligence blindsided by the meticulously planned and executed assault.

'Israel humiliated'

Israeli media reported that “Israel was humiliated and defeated today,” adding that "even if Gaza is destroyed... that will not atone for the most serious security failure since the Yom Kippur war,” he wrote in reference to the 1973 October war. 

Around dawn Saturday morning, al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, caught the Israeli occupation army off guard, triggering a state of fear and chaos across the occupied territories. 

As reported by The Washington Post, "The scale and scope of Saturday’s barrage was without parallel. More than 3,000 rockets were fired at dozens of communities that dot southern Israel, at towns in central Israel and the Negev Desert, and reached as far as Tel Aviv and Al-Quds." 

The Post referred to Israeli media reports saying Palestinian Resistance fighters were able to overrun 22 Israeli settlements in the south, including some still under siege by late Saturday evening.

What you need to know 

Earlier, Mohammad Deif, Commander-in-Chief of al-Qassam Brigades, announced the launching of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood following a barrage of rockets fired and an infiltration operation into Gaza Envelope settlements.

The leader said the operation comes in response to the Israeli occupation's desecration of al-Aqsa Mosque and multiple assaults against women in its yards. 

Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, issued a military statement regarding the operation.

Later in the day, Israeli occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "Israel is at war" after Hamas fighters initiated a large-scale surprise operation on settlements in the Gaza envelope. 

In a filmed statement published several hours after the Palestinian Resistance launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Netanyahu confirmed that he convened the heads of the Israeli security establishment and directed that Palestinian Resistance fighters who crossed into Gaza envelope settlements be "neutralized".

Towns and cities quickly fell into complete control of the Resistance units as Israeli occupation military and police forces collapsed within the first hour of the attack.

The Resistance's operation comes in the context of continued and unchecked Israeli aggression against Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied al-Quds, as well as a suffocating siege on the Gaza Strip.