A 90-year-old Holocaust survivor and a boy celebrating his fifth birthday were among the more than 1,400 victims of the October 7 Hamas terror attack in Israel.
While it is now ten days since the terror group stormed into Israel from Gaza, details are still emerging about the horrific rampage and of its many victims.
Gina Semiatich, a 90-year-old Czech-born Holocaust survivor, was tragically murdered in her home at Kibbutz Kissufim, less than two miles from the Gaza border. Eitan Kaptisher was celebrating his fifth birthday when he was killed by Hamas gunmen.
Israeli forces have now positioned themselves along Gaza’s border and drilled for what officials said would be a broad campaign to dismantle Hamas. A week of blistering airstrikes have demolished neighbourhoods but failed to stop rocket fire into Israel.
Palestine’s Red Crescent humanitarian society released video on Monday showing an ambulance carrying civilians and a child being hit by an apparent Israeli airstrike.
The World Health Organisation has also warned there were only ’24 hours of water, electricity and fuel left’ in the Gaza Strip before ‘a real catastrophe’ sets in. Officials claim the besieged territory must be allowed to receive convoys of aid and warn that if assistance does not arrive, doctors will have to ‘prepare death certificates for their patients’.
Gina Semiatich, a 90-year-old Czech-born Holocaust survivor, was tragically murdered in her home at Kibbutz Kissufim, less than two miles from the Gaza border
Another tragic victim of the attacks has been revealed to be a boy named Eitan, who according to Israel’s official account on X (formerly Twitter), was celebrating his fifth birthday when he was killed by Hamas gunmen. ‘Instead of celebrating his birthday, his parents will mourn their child’s death on the day he was born for the rest of their lives,’ the account said, along with two pictures: one of the youngster wearing a Spiderman costume, and another of his grave (right)
According to reports in Israel, Semiatich was dragged from her home shelter by the terrorists and shot in the head in her living room.
‘We had spoken to her just seconds before; she told us she was hiding in the shelter, scared,’ her grandson said in the aftermath of the attack.
Speaking to Haaretz, Shmulik Harel said ‘Dozens of terrorists entered Kisufi and broke into houses’ in the Kibbutz, home to fewer than 300 people.
‘From outside they called ‘IDF, IDF (Israel Defense Forces)’ so that we felt safe and could come out. But the majority of residents suspected that something was wrong.’
He told the Israeli newspaper that he was on the phone with Semiatich just moments before the Hamas terrorists broke into her home. Once inside, they dragged her out of her shelter and executed her on her living room floor.
Tom Gross, a British journalist and commentator, shared a post about Semiatich, saying she was born in the Czech Republic and survived the Nazi Holocaust.
‘A child born in the Czech Republic who survived the concentration camp in Terezín was murdered last Saturday by Hamas terrorists,’ he wrote, alongside her photo.
The terrorists killed eight residents of Kisufi, as well as six Thai workers there.
Another tragic victim of the attacks has been revealed to be a boy named Eitan.
According to Israel’s official account on X (formerly Twitter), Eitan Kaptisher was celebrating his fifth birthday when he was killed by Hamas gunmen.
‘Instead of celebrating his birthday, his parents will mourn their child’s death on the day he was born for the rest of their lives,’ the account said, along with two pictures: one of the youngster wearing a Spiderman costume, and another of his grave.
‘May the memory of Eitan Kaptisher be a blessing,’ the post said.
An aerial view shows members of the media during a visit to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in the aftermath of a deadly attack by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, October 15
Israeli soldiers walk past a house destroyed in the October 7 attack by Palestinian Hamas militants on kibbutz Beeri near the border with Gaza, on October 14
Houses are destroyed after clashes between Israeli and Palestinian forces in Be’eri Kibbutz
Semiatich’s grandson Harel also described how, in Kissufim, ‘terrorists entered homes, killed the residents and stayed there for hours. Meanwhile, they also continued to set homes on fire.
‘In one instance, a friend heard cries for help from elderly people, he covered himself with a sheet, and rescued them from the flames,’ he said. ‘They ravaged the houses, looted, killed and destroyed anything in their path.’
His is one of countless horrific stories that have emerged since the barbaric terrorist attack carried out by Hamas shook Israel to its core.
And since the army, police and other officials have moved in, even more atrocities have been uncovered, with reports of murdered children and babies.
Investigators are still finding bodies and piecing together the full picture of the violence that was carried out by the Palestinian gunmen against them.
Zaka, a volunteer emergency response organisation that has been charged with recovering bodies in the region, is still finding victims over a week after the attack.
Many bodies show signs of torture and rape. Some were burned alive, their homes set on fire when the gunman realised they were hiding in safe rooms.
Yossi Landau – the boss of Zaka is Israel’s southern region – told Sky News that the most recent person to have been found in the Kfar Aza kibbutz had been beheaded.
‘We thought we finished but we came back now this morning after being a week around here, and we just pulled out a body over here – no head – you know it’s the worst…’ he told the broadcaster.
‘We saw women with no clothes and hands tied to the back. We saw families… over here in this kibbutz I saw families with hands tied to the back, sitting parents and children, sitting one against the other, tortured.
‘We could see the bodies were telling the stories. ‘You know they can’t talk but they were telling us their stories, they were crying together with us,’ he added.
Others, such as around 270 young people who were attending a nearby dance festival, were gunned down as they tried to flee the gunmen.
Yossi tells Sky News that at this location, there was no torturing. Rather, he says, it was a ‘mass killing’. They are still finding bodies in places people found to hide
‘If they were hiding in a garbage can or something, they threw in a grenade to make sure everyone was killed,’ he says. ‘That’s a war crime for itself, and most of them, I would say 70 per cent, were shot in the back – that’s a war crime.’
Palestinians walk and drive away from Kibbutz Kfar Azza, Israel, near the fence with the Gaza strip following a deadly attack on the community on Saturday, October 7
Mourners walk through the cemetery during the funeral of Naor Hassisim, a victim of the Kibbutz Kfar Aza attack last week by members of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, at a cemetery, in southern Israeli city of Ashdod on October 16
In response to the terror attack, Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, and has launched its own assault against the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Since October 7, the IDF has pounded the territory with missile strikes, levelling entire neighbourhoods in an attempt to weaken the terror group before launching an expected ground assault into the enclave.
This has become the deadliest of the five Gaza wars for both sides. In addition to the more than 1,400 people killed in Israel, at least 2,778 have been killed and 9,700 wounded in Gaza, according to the Heath Ministry there.
Footage showing an ambulance carrying civilians and a child being hit by an apparent Israeli airstrike was released by Palestine’s Red Crescent humanitarian society on Monday.
In the clip, several people crammed into the back of an ambulance are heard screaming as a missile smashes into a target nearby, triggering a powerful explosion.
The vehicle was full of Gazan medics, as well as multiple civilians who had squeezed into the van to take cover as Israel’s air force continues its bombing raids across the 25-mile strip of land.
Fearing the next bomb would score a direct hit on the vehicle, the camera holder leaps out of the van and sprints down a road, apparently hoping to find a more solid shelter.
As he sprints away, his lens shows debris littering the street with blown out wreckages of cars, some still ablaze, trailing thick plumes of black smoke into the sky above.
Panic ensued in the ambulance as the occupants narrowly avoided an Israeli strike. Medics and injured civilians alike can be seen piled into the back of the van, screaming as the explosions ring around around them
Children view a destroyed ambulance parked along a street in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip
A medic runs as he carries an injured Palestinian child to ambulance
Palestinians work to clear the rubble of a collapsed building following an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, in the southern of Gaza Strip, on October 16, 2023
Members of a Palestinian civil emergency team carry the body one of their colleagues, who was killed in Israeli strikes, at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City October 16, 2023
Palestinians carry a man found under the rubble of a house destroyed in Israeli strikes into an ambulance in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip October 16, 2023
The Israeli military has been pounding the Gaza Strip with unprecedented firepower ever since Palestinian militant group Hamas, which rules the enclave, launched the biggest attack on Israel since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, killing more than 1,300 people.
Authorities in Gaza said at least 2,750 people had so far been killed by the Israeli strikes, a quarter of them children, and nearly 10,000 wounded. Another 1,000 people were missing and believed to be under rubble.
More than a million people have fled their homes ahead of an expected Israeli ground invasion aimed at destroying Hamas after its fighters rampaged through southern Israel.
Hospitals in Gaza now warn they are on the verge of collapse, with emergency generators that power machines like ventilators and incubators down to about one day of fuel and supplies of medicine almost exhausted.
The WHO said hospitals are ‘overflowing’ as people seek safety.
‘We are concerned about disease outbreaks due to mass displacement and poor water and sanitation,’ it said.
Four hospitals in northern Gaza are no longer functioning and 21 have received Israeli orders to evacuate. Doctors have refused, saying it would mean death for critically ill patients and newborns on ventilators.
The WHO said water shortages caused by Israel’s decision to cut off water supplies, combined with a lack of fuel for pumps and desalination stations, put thousands of hospital patients at risk.
‘Water is needed to ensure sanitary conditions on inpatient wards, in operation rooms, and emergency departments. It is essential for the prevention of hospital associated infections and for the prevention of outbreaks in hospitals,’ the WHO said.
WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Ahmed Al-Mandhari said the bombarded, besieged territory must be allowed to receive convoys of aid, currently stuck at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
If assistance does not arrive, doctors will have to ‘prepare death certificates for their patients’, he said.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said Monday that at least 199 hostages were taken back in Gaza, higher than previous estimates.
The military did not specify whether that number includes foreigners.
Today, as details of Semiatich and Eitan’s deaths were revealed, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for ‘the world to unite to defeat Hamas as it defeated ISIS and the Nazis’.
He also warned Iran and Tehran-backed terror group Hezbollah ‘not to test us’, amid fears that the conflict sparked by Hamas’s attack could escalate further.
Hezbollah terrorists have vowed to ‘respond’ to any move by Israel to invade Gaza with the group’s chief saying they are ‘fully prepared’ to fight alongside Hamas, raising already heightened fears of an all-out conflict.
Netanyahu told the Israeli Knesset, Netanyahu said: ‘Now, many around the world understand who Israel is facing. They comprehend that Hamas represents a new version of Nazism. Just as the world united to defeat the Nazis and Isis, so it must unite to defeat Hamas.’
His call for a united global front against Hamas comes after Netanyahu warned Israel was ‘approaching a fateful hour’ with more than 400,000 Israeli soldiers now gearing up for a battle in Gaza that will see street-fighting erupt in the tiny 25-mile long enclave.
More than one million people have now fled their homes in northern Gaza in scenes of chaos and despair in a desperate attempt to escape Israel’s imminent invasion and continued aerial bombardment of the Hamas-ruled territory.
But the United Nations has warned that a ‘spectre of death’ looms over Gaza where millions are stranded amid Israel’s total siege that is blocking food, water, medicine and fuel from reaching the enclave.
The enclave’s food and water supplies are running dangerously low, and its hospitals are warning that they are on the verge of collapse, with medics saying health centres are quickly turning into morgues.
The UN relief and works agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) also warned ‘there are not enough body bags for the dead in Gaza’.
But undeterred by the comments of human rights observers over recent days, Netanyahu said preparations were being made around the clock to launch the ground offensive, with nearly 400,000 soldiers gearing up for battle in Gaza.
He said menacingly: ‘They are ready to take action to defeat the bloodthirsty monsters who have risen against us to destroy us. Hamas thought that we would come apart – we will demolish Hamas.’
The Israeli military’s rules of engagement have reportedly been ‘loosened’ for the land, air and sea attack to allow fewer checks before shooting.
Israeli forces, supported by a growing deployment of U.S. warships in the region and the call-up of some 360,000 reservists, positioned themselves along Gaza’s border and drilled for what Israel said would be a broad campaign to dismantle the terror group.
But much of Hamas’ military infrastructure is concealed in urban areas, where street-by-street fighting would likely cause mounting casualties on both sides if Israel invades with a ground offensive.
A Palestinian man walks amid the rubble of buildings destroyed during Israeli air strikes near his home in the Rafah refugee camp in the southern of Gaza Strip, on Monday
Palestinians search for casualties under the rubble of a house destroyed in Israeli strikes in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday
Palestinians, including people wounded in Israeli strikes, arrive in a truck, at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Monday
Palestinian relatives wait to collect bodies wrapped in funeral shrouds with their names written for identification, at a hospital following Israeli military attacks on Rafah, in the southern of Gaza Strip on Monday
Meanwhile, Hamas-backer Iran and Lebanon’s terror group Hezbollah, which is also supported by Tehran, have warned that an invasion of Gaza would be met with a ‘response’. Last week, Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem said the group was ‘ready’ and would ‘contribute’ to confrontations against its southern neighbour.
And yesterday rockets, artillery fire and anti-tank shells were exchanged between Lebanon and Israel, threatening to drag the region into open warfare.
Hezbollah militants also started destroying surveillance cameras on several Israeli army posts along the border with Lebanon.
The terror group released a video Monday showing snipers destroying surveillance cameras placed on five points along the Lebanon-Israel border, including one outside the Israeli town of Metula. Hezbollah’s aim appears to be to prevent the Israeli army from monitoring movements on the Lebanese side of the border.
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