Israeli forensics teams are sifting through bags of ash to find teeth and bones in the hopes of identifying the remains of victims of the Hamas massacre.

Almost four weeks on from the attacks on Oct 7, bodies are still arriving. However, their round-the-clock work has been complicated by the horrific extent of the disfigurement suffered by many of the victims.

Commander Dr Michal Levin Elad, the head of the National Forensics Investigative Division of the Israeli police, said 11 body bags were required to hold the remains of three people.

Some 1,400 people were killed when Hamas terrorists stormed kibbutz communities in southern Israel. Many were burned alive in their homes and shelters.

Dr Elad said her team were repeatedly presented with nothing more than “a pile of ashes” when opening body bags.

She said: “Can you imagine how we feel when you have to open a body and you don’t know what’s inside? You open it and you see a pile of ashes?

“And you have to dig in this pile to find some kind of biometric information. Maybe a tooth, maybe a bone, maybe something that will help us.”

The Shura Army Base, on the outskirts of the central city of Ramla, was a quiet logistics hub before it was hastily turned into a makeshift morgue.

Now, it is one of a handful of sites where the dead are still being brought to be identified and prepared for burial by their families.

With every passing day, more human remains arrive. The work of cataloguing Hamas brutality is agonising for everyone involved.

“We are all people who worked in crime scenes [...] but this time these events were atrocious,” she said.

She said her team had seen the body of a baby with a footprint clearly visible on his throat.

“These are horrifying images that will be forever stuck in our minds,” she said.

Of the 826 bodies that have so far been recovered and brought to Dr Elad and her team, 732 have been buried.

The Israeli military is still finding more victims in southern Israel.

“They still find bones and they still find teeth,” Dr Elad said.

Inside the base, refrigerated shipping containers house black and white body bags, stored in racks one above one another.

Despite the refrigeration, the smell of decaying human remains permeated the air.

One police officer pointed to a “bag at the top left”, which he said contained “a headless child”. The Telegraph was unable to verify this account.

‘Every body bag brings a surprise’

Supt Doron Avigdon, the head of the Central District of Forensics and Investigations Unit, said it was evident from the remains that many of the victims had been subjected to “cold-blooded executions”.

Marks on the heads and faces of some victims suggested they had been shot at point blank range, he said.

Mr Avigdon said it was “psychologically” the toughest crime scene he has ever operated in.

“Every body bag is a mystery. A surprise. You get a small body bag and you don’t know until you open it whether it’s going to be a baby, maybe some bone, tissue, maybe a limb.”

In some cases, he said, “when you open the bag you don’t really understand what you see”.

“I really don’t understand how one human being can do such horrific things to another human,” he said.