More than 300 people gathered in Santa Barbara’a De la Guerra Plaza for a candlelight vigil Sunday evening to honor the more than 1,300 Jewish people killed in Israel in the past week and to denounce the terrorist group Hamas that carried out the merciless attacks.

“Today we mourn for those whose lives have been brutally taken in acts of terrorism,” said Cyndi Silverman, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara, which organized the vigil.

“We mourn with their families. We mourn once again for yet another generation’s loss of innocence.”

The attacks started just before dawn Oct. 7, as Jews were wrapping up the seven-day festival of Sukkot and 50 years and one day after the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Hamas launched thousands of missiles from Gaza while hundreds of heavily armed militants streamed into southern Israel, hunting down and killing more than 1,300 people and taking an estimated 150 people hostage.

Israel immediately declared war on Hamas, and the military response has killed more than 2,300 Palestinians in Gaza over the past week, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Sunday’s vigil in Santa Barbara was somber. Organizers and volunteers lit 13 candles in a circle to honor all the Jews who have been killed.

As of Sunday, at least 30 Americans have been confirmed killed in the attacks and the whereabouts of at least 13 others are unknown.

The Jewish Federation on Sunday handed out fliers about Israelis who were kidnapped and are believed being held hostage by Hamas.

“Our prayers are with the babies, the children, the grandparents, the families who are missing and being held hostage,” Silverman said.

“We stand in solidarity with the people of the state of Israel.”

Rabbi Belle Michael read a letter that she wrote to the Jewish community.

“We need your support now more than ever before,” said Michael, campus rabbi and Hillel director at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

“There’s a lot you can do right now and, in the future, when we rebuild all the places devastated by the furious fire of hate.”

Michael urged the crowd to donate money directly to Israeli organizations, including the Israeli Red Cross. She said financial donations will help provide medical and safety equipment.

She also asked those at the vigil to explain the situation in Israel to their networks, including on social media.

And Michael encouraged locals to connect with the victims’ families on social media so that they know that their brothers and sisters abroad are with them.

“This is a war we tried to avoid for decades,” she said. “Many concessions were made, which consequentially allowed Hamas to gain power.

“This is a war against pure evil, that finds satisfaction in brutality and pure killing.”

Michael urged the crowd to pray for and spread awareness about the hostages, many of them “young children and elderly who were abducted from their homes.”

She noted that the Jewish people have always wanted peace.

“In reality, Hamas killed any chance for peace — deliberately, if you know about the Abraham Accords — on Oct. 7, together with brutally murdering and torturing 1,300 people, among them babies,” Michael said.

“Peace means normalization, but there is nothing normal about neighbors who come to your house to kill you, burn your home down and abduct your children.”

Rabbi Arthur Gross-Shafer of Community Shul of Montecito and Santa Barbara and Samantha Silverman, the Jewish Federation’s director of Lifelong Learning, led the lighting of the candles.

Gross-Schafer said he needs to hold on to his humanity right now.

“I am praying for the safety of all the innocent victims who are suffering so much at this time,” he said. “I am worried. They are our neighbors.”

As night fell, Silverman called up people to light candles at a table.

Cantor Mark Childs of Congregation B’nai B’rith sang a prayer for the group. Members of the crowd embraced and sang “Oseh Shalom,” the Jewish prayer for peace, to end the vigil.