In the kibbutz of Kfar Aza, a massacre of civilians perpetrated by Hamas
The assault on Saturday by Hamas fighters against the kibbutz of Kfar Aza, located 2 kilometers from the Gaza Strip, turned into carnage. Around a hundred civilians were killed there, according to Israeli soldiers, reports a reporter from Agence France-Presse on Tuesday evening.
According to his account, the acrid smell of death was still omnipresent there on Tuesday: that of the remains of the attackers, recognizable by their thin black bulletproof vests, some of which were beginning to swell due to putrefaction. . Also that of certain residents, whose bodies were finally being taken away.
The threat was part of the daily life of the inhabitants of this agricultural community, who settled in this old kibbutz to maintain an Israeli presence as close as possible to the Palestinian enclave or because of the cheaper cost of living than elsewhere. But the regular rocket fire here was nothing compared to Saturday’s assault, whose incredible violence traumatized even the Israeli soldiers who finished liberating the scene during the night from Monday to Tuesday.
“When we removed the bodies of civilians, of children, I thought of General Eisenhower, after he saw the death camps in Europe”, declared retired Major General Itai Veruv, to the press. According to him, “seventy armed and trained terrorists” attacked Kfar Aza on Saturday around 6:30 a.m.
In a part of the kibbutz reserved for young adults, the small houses are blackened. Hamas gunmen “set them on fire to force their occupants out” and then machine-gun them, said 24-year-old Israeli officer Omer Barak, adding: “We found many bodies inside the houses. » He who fought for two days to liberate the kibbutz said to himself “terrified” : “I’ve never seen anything worse. I broke down when I saw the bodies of two murdered children. »
Elsewhere, the remains of an attacker, cut in two, face a line of white air raid shelters, in which residents had taken refuge, and some of which show traces of explosions at the windows. “The terrorists threw grenades inside. Nobody survived”, testified Itai Veruv. While the army seemed to be gradually leaving the area on Tuesday, a few kilometers from the kibbutz, a heavy Israeli military force was advancing towards Gaza.
