Israeli soldiers who entered the kibbutz of Kfar Aza in southern Israel on Tuesday have revealed the gruesome details of the massacre carried out by Hamas gunmen over the weekend. The militants, who broke through the border fence from Gaza early on Saturday morning, killed and mutilated dozens of civilian residents, including women, children, babies and the elderly.
One of the officers, Maj Gen Itai Veruv of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), told the BBC that the attackers showed no mercy to their victims. “Mothers, fathers, babies, young families killed in their beds, in the protection room, in the dining room, in their garden,” he said. “It’s not a war, it’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre.”
Another officer, Davidi Ben Zion, the deputy commander of Unit 71, an elite team of paratroopers who led the assault on the kibbutz, said that some of the victims were decapitated by the Hamas terrorists. “They killed them and cut some of their heads, it’s a dreadful thing to see,” he said. “They are very aggressive, like animals.”
Ben Zion added that his unit managed to save many lives of parents and children who were hiding in their homes from the attackers. “Unfortunately, some were burned by molotov [cocktails],” he said. “They are just a jihad machine to kill everybody, [people] without weapons, without nothing, just normal citizens that want to take their breakfast and that’s all.”
Kfar Aza Was One of the First Israeli Communities Attacked by Hamas
Kfar Aza is a kibbutz of 750 people located along the border with Gaza. It was one of the first Israeli communities reached by Hamas militants when they launched a surprise assault on Saturday morning. The attack was part of a coordinated operation that involved hundreds of fighters using paragliders, motorcycles and tunnels to infiltrate Israel from several points along the border.
The kibbutz had a security team composed of residents with military experience who patrolled the perimeter. They were killed fighting the attackers. Their bodies were removed on Tuesday morning from their positions in the centre of the kibbutz, and like the other Israeli dead, wrapped in black plastic and laid in a line waiting to be recovered.
The residents of Kfar Aza had expected periodic rocket attacks from Hamas after it seized control of Gaza in 2007. They accepted the danger as the price of country life in a tight-knit community that still had traces of the pioneer spirit of early Zionist settlements. But they were not prepared for the wave of attackers racing out of the breached Gaza border.
The attack was so rapid that milk and coffee from Saturday’s breakfast still sat on the table of one home visited by a journalist from The Washington Post, beside a kitchen floor smeared with blood. Outside rows of once tidy streets lined with palm trees and banana plants were shrouded by the smell of death and disfigured by the wreckage of war.
Israel Accuses Hamas of War Crimes and Vows to Retaliate
The massacre at Kfar Aza has added to the considerable evidence of war crimes committed by Hamas gunmen during their assault on Israel. The IDF said that the militants used civilians as human shields, fired rockets from schools and mosques, and executed suspected collaborators in public.
Israel has vowed to retaliate for the attack and restore its deterrence against Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would not tolerate such “barbaric acts” and would use all its military might to defend its citizens. He also called on the international community to condemn Hamas and support Israel’s right to self-defence.
Israel has launched a massive aerial and ground campaign against Hamas targets in Gaza, killing hundreds of militants and destroying dozens of tunnels and rocket launchers. The IDF said that it had also foiled several other attempts by Hamas to infiltrate Israel from different locations along the border.
However, Israel’s offensive has also caused heavy civilian casualties in Gaza, where more than 1.8 million people live under a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt since 2007. According to Palestinian health officials, more than 500 people have been killed and more than 3,000 wounded since the fighting began on Saturday. Many of them are women and children who were caught in the crossfire or hit by Israeli airstrikes.
The United Nations has expressed alarm over the humanitarian situation in Gaza and called for an immediate ceasefire. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that he was “deeply shocked” by the reports of atrocities committed by both sides and urged them to respect international humanitarian law and protect civilians.
