'IT'S A MASSACRE'
Hamas slaughters 40 babies & kids in one town with some beheaded as families burned alive in ‘pogrom’, Israel claims
HAMAS terrorists massacred at least 40 babies and kids in a sickening rampage in one town - with some found beheaded, Israel claimed.
Israeli soldiers discovered scenes of unimaginable horror in Kfar Aza - a village close to the Gaza border that was captured for two days by the Hamas militants.
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The Israeli army took back control of the besieged village on Tuesday and its soldiers were faced with the gut-wrenching task of recovering the bodies of dozens of victims.
Armed with guns, grenades and knives, Hamas terrorists beheaded men, women, children and babies in their beds early on Saturday morning after storming over the border.
Speaking from the scene of the bloodbath, reporter Nicole Zedek said a soldier told her they had found women and "babies with heads cut off".
At least 40 babies and children were slaughtered as entire families were burned alive in their homes and shot dead.
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An Israeli minister warned on Tuesday evening that locals in Gaza should "move aside" as the country prepares to hit back.
Economics minister Nir Barkat told Sky News: "Just now, we have heard of 40 young boys, some of them were burnt alive, some were beheaded, some were shot in the head."
He said: "All the militants, all the infrastructure, the people supporting Hamas. We will wipe them out.
"We're coming in to kill the militants, and any civilians [should] move aside.
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"If you do not move aside and you're giving cover to the Hamas militants, you're risking your life.
"We do not want to hurt innocent people."
It comes as...
- Hamas blitzed Israel with heavy airstrikes before Israel hit back at their 'terror hub' strongholds in Gaza
- The IDF mobilised 300,000 reservists for a full-scale ground invasion
- More than 3,000 have been confirmed dead in Israel and Gaza and thousands more injured
- PM Netanyahu dubbed Hamas "worse than ISIS" and said Israel will crush them with "a force like never before"
- The terrorists threatened to execute hostages and broadcast grisly footage
- Three British citizens have been confirmed dead, while seven other Brits are missing
It comes as local media reports suggest that Israel was in fact warned about the Hamas attack by Egyptian intelligence.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office denied having any prior knowledge of the attack, which has been dubbed a "complete intelligence failure".
Israel has also refused requests to bring food and medical supplies into the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Visibly shaken by the atrocities, Nicole said: "No one could expect it to be like this - the horrors I'm hearing from these soldiers.
"About 40 babies at least were taken out on gurneys. They are going house to house still taking out dead bodies."
She said cots and buggies were abandoned in the streets as terrified families fled the rampaging terrorists - who stormed the village in "waves" every 20 minutes for an agonising 48 hours.
Amid the burned-out houses, horrifying images show blood-soaked baby seats as Hamas militants appeared to have indiscriminately opened fire on vehicles.
Major General Itai Veruv described sickening scenes of brutal violence - where whole families were murdered in their homes.
He told reporters: "You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers, in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms and how the terrorist kills them.
"It's not a war. It's not a battlefield. It's a massacre.
"It's something I've never seen in my life. It's something we used to imagine from our grandfathers, grandmothers in the pogrom in Europe and other places."
Reporters who were allowed into the village on Tuesday described a horrifying "smell of death".
Some Israeli soldiers appeared visibly shaken by the brutality as they found streets littered with corpses after Hamas terrorists went from door-to-door gunning down entire families.
Graphic images showed families slaughtered in their bedrooms and living rooms - with the walls of their homes riddled with bullet holes.
A Telegram account set up by Israeli first responders said: "Nothing was spared. It's all systematic slaughter and destruction of everything that moves."
As bodies of victims are still being recovered in the decimated village, the total death toll is not known.
One soldier told : "It reminds me of the pogroms and of the Nazis."
More than 100 bodies have also been found in the kibbutz Be’eri - also one of first places targeted by Hamas.
Volunteers in yellow vests and face masks carried the dead out of homes on stretchers.
A trail of blood wound along the floor of a house where bodies had been dragged out by militants into the street from a blood-soaked kitchen strewn with overturned furniture.
US President Joe Biden on Tuesday said "Israel has a right and a duty to respond to these attacks".
He slammed Hamas' acts as "sheer evil" and dubbed them as terrorists as bad as "the worst rampages of ISIS".
The White House also confirmed the death of 14 Americans in Israel and said 20 are missing, with some among the hostages being held by Hamas.
The first plane carrying American ammunition landed in Israel just hours after the president's statement, the Israeli military said.
Several US warships - including USS Gerald Ford - and aircraft also arrived in the Mediterranean on Tuesday evening.
And US secretary of state Antony Blinken is due to travel to Israel on Wednesday in "a message of solidarity and support".
Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by a Taliban gunman in 2012, has called for "immediate ceasefire" to the conflict in Israel, saying she is "grieving" for the Palestinian and Israeli children "caught in the middle".
More than 3,000 people have been killed on both sides since Hamas massacred hundreds in a surprise attack on Saturday and relentless airstrikes have rained down from either side since.
On Monday, the armed wing of Hamas said it would begin for every civilian house bombed in Gaza without warning.
And Israel on Tuesday urged civilians in Gaza to flee south to Egypt ahead of an all-out ground assault.
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Israeli fighter jets hit back after Hamas' attack on Ashkelon with retaliatory airstrikes on the Rafah border, the only land exit from Gaza into Egypt.
The IDF later said their warplanes had struck Hamas' 'terror hub' in the area of Daraj Tuffah in Gaza, hitting over 70 of the group's strongholds.
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