The horror of an attack by Hamas terrorists on a “paradise” kibbutz in Israel has been revealed as an Israeli army general said his country faced “a massacre”.
Bodies of residents and Hamas militants lay in the grounds of the Kfar Aza kibbutz among burned out houses, strewn furniture and torched cars, as Israeli soldiers went from house to house to take away the dead.
Israeli Defence Forces took foreign reporters through the site, one of the hardest hit areas when Hamas militants attacked Israel from the Gaza Strip, on Tuesday.
Major General Itai Veruv said: “You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers, in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms and how the terrorist kills them. It’s not a war, it’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre, it’s a terror activity.
“It is something that I never saw in my life. It’s something that we used to imagine from our grandfathers, and grandmothers in the pogroms in Europe and other places. It’s not something that happens in new history.”
The Israeli-based news channel i24News quoted soldiers who said they had found decapitated babies in the kibbutz just three kilometres from the Gaza Strip
A reporter leading a camera through the destruction said: “It’s hard to explain exactly the mass casualties that happened right here. The Israeli military says they still don’t have a clear number.
“But I’m talking to some of the soldiers and they say what they’ve witnessed as they’ve been walking through these different houses, these different communities. Families completely gunned down in their beds.”
There was no official death toll from the Kfar Aza kibbutz as of Tuesday evening, with Israeli soldiers still searching homes they suspect may be booby-trapped with explosives.
A military spokesperson said at least dozens of residents had been killed at the site, once neatly lined with palm trees, banana plants and single-storey houses with verandas.
The Hamas gunmen rammed through the kibbutz’s fence, possibly using an earthmover, clearing the way for dozens of other gunmen to enter through the breach, she said.
Waves of the attackers, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades, stormed the village, a reserve soldier told Reuters, declining to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.
US President Joe Biden denounced Hamas on Tuesday, calling the surprise attack on Israel launched by the Palestinian militant group “an act of sheer evil”.
In an address from the White House, he stressed US support for Israel and said at least 14 Americans had been killed in the slaughter.
The president also voiced concern for Americans being held hostage by Hamas, an Iranian-backed Islamist group, whose stated purpose, he said, is to “kill Jews.”
“There are moments in this life, and I mean this literally, when the pure unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world. The people of Israel lived through one such moment this weekend,” Mr Biden told reporters.
Mr Biden described what he called “stomach turning” reports of “parents butchered,” “babies being killed,” “entire families slain” and “women raped, assaulted and paraded as trophies.”
Israel earlier announced it had re-taken control of the border with the blockaded Gaza Strip, 72 hours after Hamas fighters blew up parts of the barrier and attacked Israel on Saturday.
Israel has responded by unleashing fierce airstrikes on Gaza, where locals have described entire districts as “erased”.
The death toll has risen to more than 1,000 in Israel, according to its embassy in Washington, and at least 770 in Gaza, according to the enclave’s health ministry.
More than 180,000 people in Gaza have been made homeless, with many huddling on streets or in schools, the United Nations reported.
Brigadier Geneneral Dan Goldfus announced the death toll on the Israeli side during a briefing with reporters on Tuesday.
“We are going to go on the offence and attack the Hamas terrorist group and any other group that is in Gaza,” he said.
“We will have to change the reality from within Gaza to prevent this from happening again.”
The Hamas incursion is by far the deadliest militant attack in Israeli history.
The number of civilian victims on both sides is raising alarms for international authorities.
The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said: “International humanitarian law is clear: the obligation to take constant care to spare the civilian population and civilian objects remains applicable throughout the attacks.”
