Hamas attack on Israel: the kibbutz of Kfar Aza and Beeri, scenes of a real “massacre”

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life.” Four days after the start of Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, IDF soldiers and international journalists discovered the horror that struck, early Saturday morning, the two kibbutz of Kfar Aza and Beeri, located in the Hebrew state, only a few kilometers from the border of the Gaza Strip. Both localities were taken over by the Islamist group, which left only bodies behind.

The foreign press was authorized this Tuesday by the Israeli defense forces to enter the kibbutz of Kfar Aza, which has regained control in recent days. “I have never seen anything like this in my entire life. You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers, in their rooms, in their protection bunkers, and how the terrorists killed them, Israeli Major Itai Virov told the news agency. This is not a war, this is not a battlefield. It’s a massacre, it’s a terrorist activity,” he added.

Rumors, taken up by the Israeli channel i24 News, itself relayed by the X account (formerly Twitter) of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, even report decapitated children, but no confirmation of such information has been brought so far by another media. Israeli soldiers were busy removing the bodies of victims and Hamas terrorists from the kibbutz on Tuesday.

On site, journalists testified to the presence of wrecked trucks and smoke rising from the kibbutz following Israel's military reaction. According to the IDF, 70 Hamas members invaded Kfar Aza. Several Israeli soldiers interviewed by AFP report more than 100 civilian deaths, sometimes 150.

In a part of the kibbutz reserved for young adults, small houses are blackened, noted an AFP journalist. The Palestinians “set them on fire to force their occupants out” and then machine-gunned them, says a 24-year-old Israeli officer, Omer Barak. “But many preferred to die on fire, perhaps poisoned by smoke, rather than to be killed by terrorists,” he continues. “We found a lot of dead bodies inside the houses.” He who fought for two days to liberate Kfar Aza said he was “terrified” once the kibbutz was recaptured: “I had never seen anything worse. I broke down when I saw the bodies of two murdered children.”

A short distance away, the same scenes of horror were visible in the kibbutz of Beeri. “More than 100 people” were killed there, according to the NGO Zaka, which participated in collecting the bodies. “They were shooting at everyone”, “they murdered children, babies, elderly people, everyone in cold blood”, testified Moti Bukjin, the spokesperson for the NGO.

At dawn on Saturday, after crossing the border fence that Israel considered impregnable, hundreds of Hamas attackers rushed into Jewish communities in the south of the country, going from house to house, shooting down citizens or kidnapping them to bring them back to the Gaza Strip. Since then, Israel has been shelling the Gaza Strip. The country's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced Monday evening that a "massive attack" was being prepared in retaliation.