Hamas terrorists slaughtered at least 40 babies and young children — decapitating some of them — at a kibbutz near the Gaza border, a local outlet said Tuesday.
“It’s hard to even explain exactly, just the mass casualties that happened right here,” visibly shaken i24 News correspondent Nicole Zedek said during a broadcast from Kibbutz Kfar Aza near Sderot just about a quarter mile from the Gaza Strip.
“Babies with their heads cut off, that’s what [the soldiers] said. Gunned down. Families gunned down, completely gunned down in their beds,” Zedek said of the “sheer horror.
“This is nothing that anyone would have even imagined,” she said.
Kfar Aza was one of several Israeli kibbutzim attacked by Hamas over the weekend when extremist militants crossed from Gaza into southern Israel and unleashed a barrage of violence that gave way to an all-out war between the two sides.
Around 70 Hamas terrorists are believed to have carried out the atrocities at Kfar Aza with guns, grenades and knives, i24 News said.
“It’s not a war,” said Gen. Itai Veruv, head of the IDF’s Depth Command. “It’s not a battlefield. You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms, and how the terrorists kill them. It’s not a war. … It’s a massacre.
“It is something that I never saw in my life,” the military leader said of the destroyed kibbutz. “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.”
Reservists from the Israel Defense Forces were still clearing what remained of the community Tuesday, just a few hours after fighting in the area calmed down, Zedek said.
The soldiers were struggling to remove all the bodies since many of the homes still contain grenades and other potential booby traps, she said.
The outlet said the bodies of about 40 babies and children had been recovered — so far.
The stench of bodies hung over the scene as the IDF slowly picked through the remains.
“They say they’ve never experienced anything life this,” Zedek said of the soldiers.
The streets of the once-vibrant kibbutz were littered with debris and “baby cribs thrown aside,” she said, while an abandoned children’s soccer net in one lawn served as a painful reminder of the families who lived there.
“You hear the boom before you are told to hit the ground,” she said, explaining how sudden air assaults can wipe out families, while gesturing off-camera to where bodies were being covered by sheets.
As of Tuesday evening local time, the death count in Israel is believed to hover around 1,100, with more than 2,000 people injured.
In Gaza, Palestinian civilians were being pummeled retaliatory air strikes by the IDF.
At least 830 Gazans are dead, with hundreds of young children among them.
With Post wires