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Terrifying Reality of Recent Gaza Conflict
The stench of death was so horrifying that an Israeli soldier retrieved a slain civilian’s body from a bullet-riddled house through a window, plugging his nose with an earplug.
Amid rows of fruit-laden trees and pristine lawns in southern Israel’s Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a basketball court had been turned into a temporary morgue, where the deceased were laid to rest.
This was a scene of carnage, about which President Joe Biden said it was due to Hamas militants’ “thirst for blood” following their attack on an agricultural community near the Gaza border.
One of the journalists were given the grim opportunity to witness a series of brutal atrocities committed by Hamas fighters in Kibbutzim on Tuesday. They attacked the city through a security barrier, unleashed indiscriminate gunfire on residents, set houses on fire, and killed entire families.
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hertz, spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces, during a harrowing tour of the devastated community, told “You are witnessing a massacre. It’s crucial to see this.” “They (Hamas militants) came, and they killed civilians.”
Motorcycles and trucks were ridden by the assailants who breached the large gap in the fence, which remained open because Israeli soldiers were guarding it closely. In 1951, nearly every house in the community established by Jewish immigrants and refugees of about 700 people was either set on fire or riddled with bullets.
Israeli Major General Itay Veruv revealed that in some homes, soldiers found the bodies of entire families during the nightmarish raid.”You see children, mothers, fathers in bedrooms, in security rooms, how the terrorists killed them,” he went on to say. “This is not a war; this is not a battlefield; this is a massacre.”
Describing the horrific searches conducted by soldiers inside homes, Veruv said, “They set apartments on fire, then they shot children, they cut their heads.”
IDF was concerned that some homes were rigged with explosives, so they were having soldiers detonate them before entering. In some cases, they found bodies of the deceased under the rubble.
Some of the victims seen by ABC News bore the resemblance of laborers working at Kibbutzim, which the reporters believed were hiding in fear. In one house, rescuers found twin infants, who were only 10 months old, hidden by their parents. The parents had hidden them and sealed the door.
The sudden attack took the lives of the parents, but the children were hidden so well that the terrorists did not notice them. Rescue workers found them more than 10 hours after the deadly assault.
Soldiers went from house to house and recovered the bodies of residents who had been killed. Veruv told that some of the victims were mutilated, and the heads of many were severed.
Opening black body bags, taking them away, and loading them onto trucks could occasionally be heard in the shattered houses. In some instances, Israeli soldiers said prayers before removing the bodies.
Veruv mentioned that more than 100 men, women, and children had been killed in the community, but an accurate count was not available yet.
The impact of the shelling had scattered the possessions of many small houses. In one house, ABC News saw a child’s bed soaked with blood. In other houses, food was left untouched on dining tables.
Outside the houses, alongside Israeli soldiers, the bodies of several dead militants, bloated and dark, lay scattered on the ground. Many of the slain militants were seen lying next to the motorcycles they had used to infiltrate the community. The remains of the motor-driven paragliders used to infiltrate the community were scattered on the streets.
News Correspontent observed an ISIS-related message written in Arabic on the license plate of one of the destroyed Hamas motorcycles: “Your time has ended.”
According to Israeli military officials, similar horrific scenes were found in dozens of other bordering towns and kibbutzim. Since the sudden attack on Saturday, more than 1,200 civilians and soldiers in Israel had been killed, and more than 2,900 had been wounded by Wednesday evening.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that retaliatory Israeli airstrikes and ground-to-ground missile attacks in Gaza had killed at least 950 people and injured over 5,000 since Saturday. The ministry reported that among the dead in Gaza, there were at least 260 children and 230 women.
In a Tuesday afternoon address to the nation, Biden offered an extensive description of the horrifying violence imposed on Israel. The State Department said on Wednesday that at least 22 American citizens are among the dead. Biden said on Tuesday that Gaza had been retaken, and dozens of Americans taken captive by Hamas militants are among the many captives
“This is horrifying. It reminds us of the cruelty of Hamas, the worst of ISIS’s worst attacks,” Biden said, recalling the Islamic terrorist group that emerged following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the beheading of prisoners. and across Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Reporters in Israel.
Referring to Hamas attacks in Israel, Biden said, “Parents have been killed to save their children’s lives,” and he described the “shocking report” of children being killed and whole families being killed.
Biden supported Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to declare war on Hamas, saying, “Israel has the right to respond, and indeed it is a duty to respond to the clever attacks.” “There should be no doubt about this. The United States fully supports Israel.”