13-10-2023 (TEL AVIV) The Israeli government has not officially confirmed the specific claim that Hamas attackers decapitated infants during their shocking assault on Saturday, contradicting a prior public statement by the Prime Minister’s office, an Israeli official informed CNN.
“There have been instances of Hamas militants carrying out beheadings and other atrocities reminiscent of ISIS. However, we are unable to confirm the gender of the victims, whether they were soldiers or civilians, adults or children,” the official stated.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alluded to individuals being beheaded by Hamas during an appearance alongside Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday, though he did not specify if the victims were children.
Subsequently, his office released what it described as “horrifying photos of babies murdered and burned by the Hamas perpetrators.”
The three images portrayed two babies whose bodies had been burned beyond recognition and the bloodstained body of a third infant.
According to the post, Netanyahu exhibited these photos to Blinken, among others.
The explosive allegations regarding the beheading of children at Kfar Aza kibbutz surfaced on Tuesday in Israeli media. The Israel Defense Forces subsequently characterized the scene as a “massacre” in a statement to CNN, in which women, children, toddlers, and the elderly were said to have been “brutally butchered in an ISIS-style manner.”
Tal Heinrich, a spokesperson for Netanyahu, stated on Wednesday that babies and toddlers had been discovered with their “heads decapitated” in Kfar Aza.
US President Joe Biden appeared to corroborate this information during a roundtable discussion with Jewish community leaders on Wednesday when he remarked, “I have been doing this a long time; I never thought I would see confirmed images of terrorists beheading children.”
A US administration official later clarified Biden’s remarks, informing CNN that neither Biden nor his aides had seen pictures or received confirmed reports of children or infants being beheaded by Hamas. The official clarified that Biden was referencing public statements made by media outlets and Israeli officials.
Later in the day, an IDF spokesman, Jonathan Conricus, asserted that terrorists had likely carried out the decapitations of infants in the Be’eri kibbutz.
“We received very disturbing reports from the ground indicating that babies had been beheaded… Unfortunately, we can now say with relative confidence that this is what transpired in Be’eri,” he stated.
Initially, Israeli officials refrained from discussing the specifics of how their citizens were killed, instead likening the brutality of Hamas to that of ISIS, a Sunni extremist group known for beheading captives and burning prisoners alive.
Hamas, on the other hand, denied these allegations on Wednesday. Izzat al-Risheq, a senior official and spokesperson for the Islamist militant group, contended that international media had “spread lies about our Palestinian people and the resistance, claiming that members of the Palestinian resistance beheaded children and attacked women with no evidence to support such claims and lies.”
Al-Risheq’s claim that Hamas did not attack women is demonstrably false, as women, children, and the elderly in kibbutzim such as Kfar Aza and Be’eri were killed during the surprise attack. Videos verified by CNN, posted online, depicted women attending the music festival targeted by the group’s gunmen being kidnapped.
CNN conducted extensive research into the claims of atrocities committed by Hamas, scrutinizing hundreds of hours of online media. While an authentic video was found showing an assailant attempting to behead an injured man with a garden tool, CNN could not verify any visual evidence of decapitated children.
Furthermore, a visit to the ransacked ruins of Kfar Aza on Tuesday revealed no evidence of beheaded youths, and Israeli officials have not released any photographs of the incident.
