Hamas terrorists beheaded babies and gunned down entire families in their homes in a small kibbutz in Israel, horrified Israeli soldiers have revealed.
Some 70 Hamas terrorists wielding guns and grenades stormed the usually quiet Kfar Aza kibbutz in southern Israel, killing anyone – men, women and children – they saw.
The bullet-riddled bodies of Israeli residents now lay in the grounds of the kibbutz among burned out houses, strewn furniture and torched cars. Solemn Israeli soldiers today went from house to house to take away the scores of people massacred there.
They told told how they saw the bodies of babies next to their cots, their heads chopped off, in a sign of the depraved acts committed by the terrorists since they attacked Israel on Saturday.
The Israeli soldiers were seen comforting each other after the horrors they witnessed, including the bodies of entire families who were gunned down in their beds.
‘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,’ said Israeli Major General Itai Veruv from the horrific scene.
sraeli soldiers remove the body of a compatriot, killed during an attack by the Palestinian militants, in Kfar Aza, on Tuesday
Hamas terrorists beheaded babies and gunned down entire families in their homes in a small kibbutz in Israel, Israeli soldiers have revealed
‘It is something that I never saw in my life. It’s something that we used to imagine from our grandfathers, grandmothers in the pogrom in Europe and other places. It’s not something that happens in new history.’
The stench of bodies was heavy in the air as the soldiers showed journalists the kibbutz, popular amongst families. The small football nets where children would have played football were seen on a pocket of grass – but in the background, the bodies of families were laid on the ground.
Outside one of the small houses of the kibbutz the body of a resident was covered by a purple sheet with a bare foot protruding. A pillow and other objects from the house lay scattered.
Elsewhere bodies of the gunmen lay face down on the ground. A destroyed gate at the perimeter of the kibbutz showed where the gunmen had entered.
The terrorists went on a rampage, killing hundreds of Israelis and taking dozens hostage in places like Kfar Aza, near Sderot. Some of the houses had been almost totally destroyed in the attack with collapsed, burned walls.
Israeli troops were going house to house to retrieve civilian bodies in body bags. They had not been able to take them before as they were still fighting gunmen and working through booby-traps.
One soldier shouted: ‘Tell the world what you saw here.’
Soldiers were still securing the paths of the kibbutz, which had single-storey houses with verandas, palm trees and banana plants, as bursts of gunfire and explosions could be heard in the distance. Jets could be heard above and smoke could be seen rising from Gaza. Sirens warned of incoming rockets intercepted overhead.
A military spokesperson said the death toll from the Hamas attacks had climbed to 1,000, mostly civilians gunned down in their homes, on the streets or at a dance party, dwarfing the scale of any past attack by Islamists apart from 9/11. Scores of Israelis were taken to Gaza as hostages, with some paraded through the streets.
At least 770 Gazans have since been killed in Israeli strikes, according to Gaza officials, while whole districts in Gaza have been flattened.
It comes Hamas today launched a barrage of rockets at the port city of Ashkelon – hours after the terrorists warned Israeli civilians living there to leave before 5pm or die in response to the airstrikes relentlessly pounding the Gaza strip.
Video shows a series of rockets being fired at the city in southern Israel just after 5pm local time (3pm UK time), with residents there being urged to shelter from the onslaught.
Rockets fired from the Gaza Strip are intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defence missile system over Ashkelon on Tuesday
Palestinians carry a wounded man at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday following Israeli airstrikes
A Palestinian man carries the body of a child killed in overnight Israeli shelling during a funeral in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip
Air raid sirens were heard across the city, with footage showing frantic parents picking up their young children before sprinting into an airport to take cover from the rocket attack.
Panicked civilians, many of whom were desperately trying to flee the carnage on flights, were seen cowering as the sound of shells exploding resounded around them. One woman cried: ‘They’ve closed the doors. Oh my god, I am so scared, we heard a boom and now we wait and see, oh God.’
Hamas’s armed wing had warned residents of the city to leave before 5pm Israeli time (3pm UK time) or face death in response to the Israeli airstrikes that have destroyed thousands of Hamas targets and killed 770 Palestinians.
It comes after Israel warned Hamas they had ‘nowhere to hide’ and that its air force was launching ‘extensive attacks’ on the Palestinian terrorist group every four hours in revenge for its deadly surprise incursion that saw more than 1,000 Israelis slaughtered.
Israeli forces have already used its strike force of 600 planes and 300 rocket launchers to relentlessly pound the Gaza strip.
‘We will reach them everywhere,’ military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said, hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to obliterate Hamas.
Netanyahu, who first came to power in Israel in 1996 and has served three separate terms, compared Hamas to the Islamic State group and said Israel planned to deploy ‘unprecedented force’ that would ‘reverberate for generations’.
But in response, Hamas’s military wing said that it would launch rockets at the city of Ashkelon while warning the residents there to leave there by 5pm this evening or die. And that promise came true, with video showing a series of rockets being fired by Hamas terrorists towards the city.
Footage also showed Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system destroying many of the rockets after they were fired from the Gaza strip.
Medics transport wounded children into at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday
A man carries a wounded child into at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday
The terrorists also warned today they will not hand over hostages until the fighting ends – a day after they warned they would execute Israeli civilian captives if the airstrikes continued.
Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, told NBC News the terrorist group is not open to a prisoner exchange, before issuing the sinister message: ‘The colonial occupation will pay a price for the devastation inflicted upon the Palestinians in Gaza.’
Prior reports had suggested that Qatar had been mediating a potential swap of Israeli hostages in exchange for imprisoned Palestinians. It comes after Hamas warned late last night it would begin executing Israeli civilian captives.
‘Every targeting of our people without warning will be met with the execution of one of the civilian hostages,’ Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said in a statement.
Since the incursion began on Saturday, Hamas fighters have abducted up to 150 people, including women and children, from Israeli territory and dragged them back in Gaza amid their ruthless slaughter.
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