Wearing a blue flak jacket, Lord Cameron stepped gingerly over a pile of crushed terracotta tiles lying outside of a bullet-riddled cottage as he toured a kibbutz targeted by Hamas in October.

The Foreign Secretary described what he saw in Be’eri on Thursday, where the terror group massacred more than 100 people and kidnapped many others on Oct 7 as “absolutely horrific”.

Lord Cameron said: “I wanted to come here to see it for myself; I’ve heard things, I’ve seen things I will never forget.”

The former prime minister arrived in Israel just a day before a highly-anticipated ceasefire deal was due to take effect.

Under the terms of the agreement, fighting will stop at 7am on Friday, with a first batch of hostages held by Hamas set to be freed in the afternoon. Critical supplies of aid will also be allowed to flow into the Gaza Strip, which has been devastated by Israel’s offensive.

Lord Cameron urged both sides to follow through with the deal after it was pushed back by a day at the last-minute, late on Wednesday evening.

“This is a crucial opportunity to get hostages out and aid into Gaza, to help Palestinian civilians who are facing a growing humanitarian crisis,” he said.

“And I hope and would urge everyone involved in that agreement to make sure that it happens.”

Lord Cameron was accompanied by Eli Cohen, the Israeli foreign minister, during his morning tour of Be’eri and several Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers, who described the horror that unfolded during Hamas’ cross-border raid.

Be’eri, a previously idyllic farming community situated just a few miles away from the Gaza Strip, was the scene of one of the terror group’s worst attacks.

Standing in the remnants of one of the community’s charred houses, an officer recounted to Lord Cameron how Hamas had deliberately torched the building on Oct 7, burning some of those inside to death.

“So that people had to leave and then more were killed?” Lord Cameron asked.

Those who escaped were shot in the head by gunmen lurking outside, the officer responded.

Lord Cameron was later seen walking outside the house, where a neat yard fringed by autumn-leaved bushes seemingly bore no traces of October’s slaughter.

But evidence of the tragedy wasn’t far away. Nearby, a white plastic high chair stood abandoned on the side of a gravel path.

Share that trauma

After his tour of the kibbutz, Lord Cameron met with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Isaac Herzog, the president, telling them he stood “with the people of Israel” as they endured “a huge amount of trauma”.

“I’m not sure anyone can fully understand and share that trauma, but I remember the worst days of being prime minister was when British hostages were taken in Syria, and so many of them lost their lives in the most gruesome, terrible fashion,” he told Mr Herzog.

“I remember the effect that had on me as prime minister and thinking about that and so perhaps know a tiny bit of what your nation is going through.”

Lord Cameron, who assumed his new role in November, met counterparts from Arab and Islamic countries in London on Wednesday to discuss the conflict.

Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, and Lord Cameron’s predecessor James Cleverly have visited Israel since fighting began.