The horrors inflicted on Israelis living on a kibbutz near the Gaza border were laid bare on Wednesday, as the world’s media were toured the bullet-ridden and blood-stained settlement where more than a hundred people were murdered.
The Israeli army took reporters, among others a Fox News crew Tuesday to Be’eri, just five kilometers from the Gaza border.
The kibbutz was known as an artistic and agricultural community of 1,200 people, but was overrun on Saturday by Hamas terrorists who attacked with grenades, guns and knives.
IDF soldiers fought for eight hours to drive Hamas out of the camp, going door to door to kill the terrorists in Israeli homes, and it was only liberated on Sunday – the last settlement to be liberated from Hamas.
Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst was one of the reporters toured a kibbutz attacked by Hamas on Saturday
Yingst tweeted photos of the destroyed houses in the kibbutz
The Fox News reporter showed blood-stained floors and bullet-ridden homes
Only on Tuesday was the site declared safe for outsiders: all the bodies of Israeli victims had been removed, but the burned and mutilated corpses of Hamas fighters still lay in heaps on the edge of the kibbutz.
The smell was reversing, reporters said, and Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst took viewers inside one of the bullet-ridden and blood-covered homes.
“You can see the floors are stained with blood,” he said.
“It was Saturday morning, around 7am, when militants stormed this village. You see the weapons they brought with them, extra ammunition, bullet holes in the side of the house and knives on the floor.”
Yingst said the community was “littered with bodies.”
‘It’s completely destroyed. It appears some buildings were hit by RPGs and explosives.”
He said he came across ‘beds covered in blood’, with residents murdered in their beds.
The IDF said some victims had been beheaded.
Yingst, 30, said it was “hell on earth” and described the scene as the most horrific he had seen in his career as a reporter around the world. Yingst joined Fox five years ago.
Yingst’s crew filmed weapons in the houses in the kibbutz where Israelis were being murdered
Doors were riddled with bullets – a testament to the brutality of Saturday’s Hamas attack
This image (above) shows how the Hamas massacre at Kibbutz Kfar Aza unfolded
Troops remove the bodies of victims killed during an attack by Hamas terrorists in Kfar Aza on Tuesday
Israeli soldiers walk next to the bodies of Hamas militants killed on Tuesday in the Kfar Aza kibbutz
Israeli soldiers search Tuesday for the bodies of Israelis killed in the Kfar Aza kibbutz near the Gaza border
A charred house after an attack by Palestinian terrorists on the kibbutz on Tuesday
A house in ruins after an attack by Hamas militants on this kibbutz days earlier, when dozens of civilians were killed near the Gaza border on Tuesday
A soldier is overcome with emotion as he searches for bodies in the kibbutz
“We saw about eight bodies in body bags from the locals who were here,” he said.
“Some may be militants. They still have to work to identify the bodies. Some are difficult to identify.
“I just want to tell you what the commander told me when we got here. He saw many of the families slaughtered in their beds and in their bomb shelters after Hamas militants broke through the door. He told us that people had been beheaded here, people had their hands tied behind their backs and shot dead.
‘And you saw from that house: it is the most horrific thing I have ever seen.
“It’s a community where dining tables have breakfast plates with food still on them.
‘There are refrigerators like you see all over the world, with pictures of little children playing sports. Bicycles and still ceiling fans enter the house and beds are soaked in blood. The floor of that kitchen, as you saw, and there are weapons of those militants everywhere. You can see some of their vehicles just outside.
“It’s a house of horrors behind me and the whole neighborhood looks like this.”
