Islamic terrorists targeted Jewish women, children, and babies, BBC call them 'militants'.
Hamas terrorists massacred babies and young children before beheading some of them, gunning down their families in a small kibbutz in Israel, horrified Israeli soldiers have claimed.
The onslaught saw around 70 Hamas fighters – yesterday branded 'animals' and 'worse than Isis' by the Israeli army – armed with machine guns and grenades storm the usually quiet Kfar Aza kibbutz in southern Israel killing men, women and children indiscriminately.
The bullet-riddled bodies of Israeli residents now lay in the grounds of the kibbutz among burned out houses, strewn furniture and torched cars. Solemn Israeli soldiers today went from house to house to take away the scores of people massacred there.
Outside the destroyed homes, the soldiers told i24News correspondent Nicole Zedek how they saw the bodies of babies next to their cots, their heads chopped off, in a sign of the depraved acts committed by the terrorists since they attacked Israel on Saturday.
As many as 40 babies and small children were killed, IDF soldiers told i24News after taking them to the scene of the atrocity. Harrowing images from the scene show a baby's cot covered with blood, her small bloodied dress lying next to it.
The Israeli soldiers were seen comforting each other after witnessing such horrors, including the bodies of entire families who were gunned down in their beds.'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 a terror activity,' said Israeli Major General Itai Veruv from the horrific scene.
'It is something that I never saw in my life. 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.'
Major David Ben Zion, 37, a reservist called up to try to rescue any survivors, told The Independent: 'We saw dead babies, girls. We succeeded in saving some of them but we found most dead in their houses. They came with just one mission – to kill more and more of our people.'
The stench of bodies was heavy in the air as the soldiers showed journalists the kibbutz, popular amongst families. The small football nets where children would have played football were seen on a pocket of grass - but in the background, the bodies of families were laid on the ground.
Outside one of the small houses of the kibbutz the body of a resident was covered by a purple sheet with a bare foot protruding. A pillow and other objects from the house lay scattered.
Elsewhere bodies of the gunmen lay face down on the ground. A destroyed gate at the perimeter of the kibbutz showed where the gunmen had entered. The terrorists went on a rampage, killing hundreds of Israelis and taking dozens hostage in places like Kfar Aza, near Sderot. Some of the houses had been almost totally destroyed in the attack with collapsed, burned walls.
Israeli troops were going house to house to retrieve civilian bodies in body bags. They had not been able to take them before as they were still fighting gunmen and working through booby-traps.
One soldier shouted: 'Tell the world what you saw here.'
Soldiers were still securing the paths of the kibbutz, which had single-storey houses with verandas, palm trees and banana plants, as bursts of gunfire and explosions could be heard in the distance.
'What the journalists saw today is a massacre: children, women and elderly who were butchered,' said Nir Dinar, an Israeli Defence Force spokesman. 'These are animals, worse than Isis.' He said that the casualties numbered in 'dozens', adding 'we are still counting'.
Tens of thousands of Jews were massacred in pogroms – anti-Jewish riots tolerated or even orchestrated by police and soldiers – in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
They fuelled a climate of hatred and murder that would be exploited by the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s. The ruthless murder of innocent families at the Kfar Aza kibbutz by Hamas terrorists is just one of many massacres to emerge since the gunmen launched their surprise attack on Saturday.