It was a scene of horror recounted by members of the international press who were invited on Tuesday by the Israeli army to the Kibbutz Kfar Aza, after the attack on this village on Saturday by Hamas. Everyone told of the houses burned and attacked by Hamas fighters, the bodies of the victims picked up by Israeli soldiers. Were 40 babies among the victims of this village, established about five kilometers from the barrier erected between the Gaza Strip and Israel? And were some beheaded? This appalling count was covered on the front page this Tuesday morning by the international press. Hamas denied this on Wednesday in a press release relayed by Al-Jazeera.
On the social network X, this grim count of 40 dead babies also spread quickly. “40 babies killed” commented the official account of the State of Israel on X, relaying a report from the I24 News channel.
I24 News journalist Nicole Zedek speaks there of “babies with severed heads, families shot to death in their beds”, giving the soldiers present on site as a source. In another video also broadcast by the Israeli news channel, Nicole Zedek, who is the channel’s English-speaking correspondent, talks about “babies being carried away on stretchers.” The presenter then interrupts him and asks him “Are you talking about 40 dead babies? “. The journalist replied: “That’s what one of the commanders told me.”
In a third extract from the report, the journalist interviewed an Israeli soldier, David Ben Zion, deputy commander of Unit 71. “We walked from door to door, we killed a lot of terrorists,” explains the soldier. We are stronger than them. They are very aggressive, very bad. They cut off women’s heads, they cut off children’s heads, but we are stronger than them. »
Other media present on site reported the same story from this soldier, while specifying that they were not able to independently verify these assertions. This is what the British newspaper writes The Independent Or the BBC. The journalist present for The world underlines for his part, in an article published Tuesday morning, that “rumors of multiple beheadings of children have circulated”, but recalls that “no Israeli official has, for the moment, confirmed them”. THE New York Timeswho also visited the kibbutz, does not mention the results of the attack or the beheadings.
Israeli Foreign Ministry unable to confirm number of ’40 murdered babies’
CNN broadcast the testimony of a second soldier in Kfar Aza, who is not named, who said that the attackers “cut off people’s heads” (at 3’40 in this video). Reuters news agency reports as for the words of a major general, Itai Veruv, who was present on site, and who mentions beheadings.
A source within the Israeli NGO Zaka* confirmed to American media CBS News having seen atrocities in Kfar Aza. Yossi Landau, Zaka’s head of operations for the southern region, said he saw decapitated children and babies with his own eyes.
However, the Israeli Foreign Ministry told AFP on Wednesday that it was not able “at this stage” to confirm the number of “40 murdered babies”.
The Israeli army has, at the time of writing, not communicated any report on the massacre that occurred in Kfar Aza, nor has it confirmed any beheadings. Questioned during the night from Monday to Tuesday on CNN, an army spokesperson spoke of “brutally mutilated bodies”.
The soldier noted that “the scale and barbaric nature of these attacks is something we have never seen before”, before emphasizing: “As your journalists have seen today, as our forces cross the south and are cleaning house by house, making sure there is no terrorist presence left, we are starting to hear these stories. We are starting to find these bodies that have been brutally mutilated, entire communities massacred. »
Kfar Aza is not the only kibbutz that was the site of a massacre. Another Hamas attack in the kibbutz of Be’eri, less than ten kilometers from Kfar Aza, caused the death of “more than 100” people, Moti Bukjin, Hamas spokesperson, said on Monday. Zaka NGO.
* Requested for this article, neither the Israeli army nor the NGO Zaka responded. We will update this article if new information reaches us.