Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of adults and children harmed and killed by Hamas.
Israel is still discovering the full scale of the atrocities committed by Hamas when gunmen stormed across the Gaza border and began killing soldiers and civilians in an unprecedented attack on Saturday, Oct. 7. Almost a week later, Israeli officials have found the bodies of at least 1,300 people butchered by the knives, rockets, and bullets with which Hamas announced its incursion, sparking a massive retaliation that is likely only just beginning.
But for those Israelis involved in the immediate response to the attacks, the truly historic scale of the bloodshed was evident right away.
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One of those people was Sacha. A former soldier living in Ashkelon in southern Israel, Sacha now works for a private company as a counterterrorism instructor. He told The Daily Beast through a translator that he’d already heard the sirens, explosions, and gunfire on Saturday morning when a friend called to tell him of a “terrible emergency going on.” Sacha’s friend said he was heading south, toward Gaza, and—armed only with a handgun—Sacha decided to join him.
They first arrived in Kibbutz Erez, where they were told that even further south the border fence had been breached. So they pressed on to Netiv HaAsara, where they were greeted with a terrible sight: a massacre had taken place. Sacha says the bodies of both adults and children were “thrown all over the place” and the scene was “beyond description.” But by the time Sacha arrived, the Israeli army was already there, and help was needed elsewhere.
Hearing of gun battles ongoing in Kibbutz Be’eri, Sacha and his friend got on the road again. Along the way, Sacha says, they passed burnt-out cars—both military and civilian—and more bodies lying in the street. He said it would be days before anyone collected the corpses.
Arriving at Be’eri, Sacha says he saw injured soldiers being evacuated from the kibbutz as other troops engaged Hamas militants inside. He said he joined the fray, ultimately being pushed back by the onslaught. The battle would rage at Be’eri for two days; having been one of the first Israeli communities to be targeted by Hamas, it was one of the last to be freed. When the shooting stopped, officials said, at least 112 residents were found dead, with others feared to have been abducted and taken to Gaza.
Sacha says he was one of the people who volunteered to re-enter the kibbutz as the operation to collect the bodies started. Inside, he found the body of one woman who was on top of the body of a child. He also claims to have found the remains of as many as 16 children in the same room, all of whom had bindings on their hands and legs. “Each one was shot in the stomach, so that not only would they die, but they would bleed to death, so there wouldn’t be instant death,” Sacha said. “It would be a torturous type of situation.” He estimated that the children were between six and seven years old.
In Kibbutz Kfar Aza—where foreign journalists were taken by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to witness for themselves what had taken place—Sacha says he found more horrors. One home had been destroyed with rocket-propelled grenades after militants found it “locked too tightly,” Sacha said. He also claims he saw “an old man in a wheelchair—his head had been cut off and he had bullets in his body.”
The Daily Beast has not been able to independently verify Sacha’s claims, though stories of atrocities against both adult and child civilians in the kibbutzim have been widely reported elsewhere.
A first responder with United Hatzalah, Israel’s volunteer ambulance organization, also said he made disturbing discoveries as the attack unfolded Saturday. Ianir Ishay told The Daily Beast the organization dispatched him to what it said was a “shooting event” in a kibbutz near the Gaza border. “As we arrived to the scene, it was horrific,” he said. “What we saw was a massacre. Kids, babies, families—dead. They were massacred. It was not just a ‘normal’ shooting, it was a massacre.”
Ishay also volunteers for Zaka—a quasi-governmental organization best known for its work identifying disaster victims and recovering bodies to prepare them for proper Jewish burial. He said that there was “shooting all around” when he arrived, and that he and a partner were “a little bit afraid, but we were focused on saving lives. But there wasn’t much life to save.” Within minutes, he said, they “changed perspective from medics to Zaka people, which means we went and picked up bodies, basically.”
“The sights we experienced was like seeing a massacre of animals,” he added. “The people were murdered because they were Jewish, not because they were soldiers.” Ishay adds that his organizations now need help. “We used the logistics of five years in five days,” he said. “We used all our utilities, all our reserves, and we need help with donations and logistics and equipment.” He said that “butchering small kids and babies took place in Israel, next to the Gaza Strip.”
Those providing medical aid to the wounded and dying were similarly faced with a dreadful ordeal. Ilay Lallouz, a 22-year-old medic, said she arrived at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba at around 3 p.m. on Saturday, helping to treat patients injured by grenades and other weapons. “I wanted to help, and I heard that the ER needed volunteers, so I came here and it was indescribable,” she told The Daily Beast. “A lot of people terrified, a lot of people with gunshots, a lot of wounds, people crying, people trying to find their relatives. And I tried to do my best.”
Lallouz said she didn’t leave the hospital until 2 a.m. But in the days since, the torment hasn’t abated. “I’m scared,” she said. “My boyfriend got sent to the army and I am very scared for his life. I stay at home, I am scared to go out unless it’s to the ER, if it is absolutely necessary.” “It’s not just rockets,” she explained. “It’s people doing massacres to people.”
Ron Hadad, a barber, said he too went to the hospital on Saturday. He brought a chair with him and has been giving haircuts outside because he wanted “to do something for the army, for the reserves, for the police, so they could feel normal even after what they had been through.” “We are all one, we are all bound to each other,” he told The Daily Beast. “I came to do my part in the war, even though I am just a barber.”
He said he was speaking out about the situation in Israel because the world should know “how much worse this is even than ISIS.” “The word needs to spread all around the globe that Hamas is worse than ISIS, this shows their true face and intentions,” Hadad added.
