Israel-Gaza war: Recovered bodies show ‘bloodthirsty’ gunmen ‘took time over torture’ – and that Hamas has changed

Published

2 years ago

October 15, 2023

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We’ve been travelling to the many different scenes where Hamas fighters carried out their terror attack on Israel this week, and it is becoming clear that their tactics and levels of brutality changed from location to location.

Warning – this story contains descriptions and pictures of a graphic nature

In the attack on the Nova music festival, for example, the gunmen abducted some of the partygoers, and then murdered many more, spraying them with gunfire and throwing grenades into places they were hiding.

The hiding places included toilets, dirt bins, cars, and bomb shelters.

Hundreds died at the festival.

War latest: Israel ‘kills Hamas commander’

In the various kibbutzim they attacked nearby, their behaviour descended to a whole new level of depravity.

They didn’t just kill – they took their time. They bound families, tortured them, and eventually murdered them.

This is something fundamentally different to the behaviours of Hamas we have seen in the past.

I’ve met Hamas on many occasions and interviewed their fighters.

They were always much more like a militia at war with Israel, rather than bloodthirsty killers and torturers.

Something has changed.

Bodies ‘tell stories of torture’

The testimony of the people charged with recovering the dead is disturbing and difficult to listen to, but they want everyone to understand just how horrific it was.

Zaka, a volunteer civilian emergency response organisation charged with recovering the bodies here, is still finding bodies of the victims over a week later.

Yossi Landau is the boss for the southern region – he has been doing this work for 33 years all over the world.

He tells me the latest person to be found at the Kfar Aza kibbutz has been beheaded.

He says: “We thought we finished but we came back now this morning after being a week around here, and we just pulled out a body over here – no head – you know it’s the worst…”

He tells me he has never seen anything like this, and that the sheer brutality of Hamas has stunned his entire team.

“We saw women with no clothes and hands tied to the back,” he says. “We saw families… over here in this kibbutz I saw families with hands tied to the back, sitting parents and children, sitting one against the other, tortured.

“We could see the bodies were telling the stories.

“You know they can’t talk but they were telling us their stories, they were crying together with us.”

‘That’s a war crime’

Yossi and his team have carried out their work at all the sites of Saturday’s rampage.

He says there are noticeable differences between the way people were killed at the various locations.

“By the festival, they weren’t tortured – there was no torture because everything was on a field and they had no time for doing that,” he explains.

“There was no torturing, it was mass killing – like if they were hiding in a garbage can or something, they threw in a grenade to make sure everyone was killed.

“That’s a war crime for itself, and most of them, I would say 70%, were shot in the back – that’s a war crime.”

He continued: “In Kfar Aza and Be’eri, we are talking about a total of 280 bodies, 280 casualties.

“I would say 80% was tortured, and you’re talking children, adults…

“You’re talking a pile, two piles – when we found them in Be’eri, two piles of ten children each were tied to the back, burnt to death…”

He says as far as he can tell, Hamas’s killers had time to do whatever they wanted.

“They had the time, nobody bothered them, they had the manpower – I wouldn’t call it manpower – the butcher power…”

‘We collect the terrorists’

When we met up with Yossi and his team, they had just been tasked with recovering the bodies of those gunmen.

We travel to one area of kibbutz Kfar Aza and are turned around – a soldier says it’s too dangerous.

Yossi wants to pick up the bodies – the soldier says he can’t.

They agree a digger will go forward and pick up the dead, and we take another route to another site to collect a handful of bodies.

The dead fighters are gathered together and placed in individual body bags.

Using a can of spray paint, members of Zaka then mark the bags with an X, designating that they aren’t civilians but that they are the bodies of the killers.

The bodies are then scooped up from the ground with a forklift and transferred onto a bulldozer.

Zaka already knows that their teams are suffering extreme psychological stress.

Their families have been briefed to pass up the line if their loved ones are behaving abnormally, so they can get help.

Yossi says humanely retrieving the very people who carried out the attack is itself “very difficult” to do because they “killed our brothers and sisters and tortured the people”.

But he says it’s what they do.

“We do it for the families, for the dead people, and unfortunately we do it for the terrorists too…

“We collect the terrorists, we make sure they get in body bags, they go in for identity and they’re being stored, but that’s not our department it goes further.

“But we have to make sure that to honour – that’s our religion, to honour death and life – because everyone has a family behind them, and that’s Zaka’s work.”

World

Gaza food situation ‘worst it’s ever been’, charity says – as tank attack reportedly kills 12 at camp

Published

8 hours ago

July 22, 2025

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Gaza food situation 'worst it's ever been', charity says - as tank attack reportedly kills 12 at camp

An aid worker in Gaza has told Sky News the food situation in the enclave is “absolutely desperate” and “the worst it’s ever been”.

Her comments to chief presenter Mark Austin come amid fresh outcry over aid restrictions, with the UK joining 24 other countries to urge an immediate end to the war.

It also comes as at least 12 more Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded when tanks shelled a tent encampment in western Gaza City, according to health authorities.

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Medics, speaking early on Tuesday, said two shells were fired at tents housing displaced people from tanks positioned north of the Shati camp.

Israel hasn’t yet commented on the reports.

Rachael Cummings, humanitarian director for Save The Children, spoke to Sky News from Deir al Balah, a city where tens of thousands of people have sought refuge during repeated waves of mass displacement.

She said: “One of my colleagues said to me yesterday, ‘We are all walking together towards death’. And this is the situation now for people in Gaza.

“There is no food for their children, it’s absolutely desperate here.”

“The markets are empty,” she said. “People may even have cash in their pockets yet they cannot buy bread [or] vegetables.

“My team have said to me, ‘There’s nothing in my house to feed my children, my children are crying all day, every day.”

Israel launched a ground assault on southern and eastern Deir al Balah for the first time on Monday after having issued an evacuation order.

Local medics said at least three people were killed when houses and mosques were hit by tank shelling.

Sources told Reuters news agency that Israel believes some of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas in October 2023 could be in the area.

Ms Cummings’s remarks came as the UK and 24 other nations issued a joint statement calling for a ceasefire.

The statement criticised aid distribution in Gaza, which is being managed by a US and Israel-backed organisation, Gaza Health Foundation (GHF).

Hundreds of people have reportedly been killed while trying to get food in recent weeks, both from GHF and UN convoys.

“The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity,” the joint statement said.

The 25 countries also called for the “immediate and unconditional release” of hostages captured by Hamas during the 7 October 2023 attacks.

Lammy promises £40m for Gaza

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has promised £40m for humanitarian assistance in Gaza.

He told MPs: “We are leading diplomatic efforts to show that there must be a viable pathway to a Palestinian state involving the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas, in the security and governance of the area.

“Hamas can have no role in the governance of Gaza, nor use it as a launchpad for terrorism.”

Addressing the foreign secretaries’ joint written statement, charity worker Liz Allcock – who works for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) in Gaza – told Sky News: “While we welcome this, there have been statements in the past 21 months and nothing has changed.

“In fact, things have only got worse. And every time we think it can’t get worse, it does.”

“Without a reversal of the siege, the lack of supplies, the constant bombardment, the forced displacement, the killing, the militarisation of aid, we are going to collapse as a humanitarian response,” she said.

“And this would do a grave injustice to the 2.2 million people we’re trying to serve.

“An immediate and permanent ceasefire, and avenues for accountability in line with international law, is the minimum people here deserve.”

The war in Gaza started in response to Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed 1,200 people and saw about 250 taken hostage.

More than 59,000 Palestinians have since been killed, with more than half being women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.

In recent weeks hundreds of Palestinians have reportedly been killed while waiting for food and aid.

The Israeli military has blamed Hamas militants for fomenting chaos and endangering civilians.

World

Trade war: Is August escalation on – or will Trump chicken out?

Published

8 hours ago

July 22, 2025

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Trade war: Is August escalation on - or will Trump chicken out?

Donald Trump is clearly seething over the term ‘TACO’ (Trump always chickens out) – a phrase that has characterised financial market trading over the past few months.

It suggests that for all the president’s bluster and threats during his on-off trade war to date, he rarely follows through.

When asked by a reporter about TACO in late May, as his “liberation day” escalation remained on pause, he declared it a “nasty” question and said he wanted negotiations.

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Mr Trump wants a deal but to effectively bully America’s trading partners into agreeing better terms.

It’s a playbook that has defined his time in the White House and, as things stand, more than 20 nations and territories, including Japan and South Korea, face heightened tariffs of up to 40% on their exports to the US from 1 August.

Financial markets don’t really believe it. Stock markets, for example, are still hovering near or at record levels in both the US and in Europe. The FTSE 100 closed above 9,000 points for the first time on Monday evening. TACO is ingrained in those values.

But are markets in for a shock, especially when it comes to the fight with America’s single largest trading partner, the European Union? It was created, Mr Trump has previously claimed, to “screw” the United States.

It’s fair to say there was great optimism in the EU earlier this month that a deal, similar to that agreed between the US and UK, was looming to avert the worst of a threatened 30% baseline tariff from 1 August.

But the mood music in Brussels changed at the back end of last week and now EU diplomats are even briefing that a broader range of retaliation measures is being considered beyond additional tariffs on US goods.

The seriousness of this fight should not be underestimated.

EU figures show trade in goods and services between the bloc and the US account for almost a third of all global trade, at a value in 2024 alone of €1.68trn (£1.45trn).

EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic has warned that a 30% tariff would “practically prohibit” the bloc’s transatlantic trade, according to remarks via diplomats reported by the Reuters news agency.

We’re told that, even if time runs out, a truce could theoretically be agreed soon after 1 August.

Much will depend on the EU’s response.

Does it go down the route taken by the UK and not retaliate, pending the conclusion of talks?

There is growing pressure on Brussels to call Mr Trump’s bluff.

The EU has a package of tariffs on €21bn of US goods ready to go from 6 August. An additional package is yet to be finalised.

France is demanding US services are hit too, with even Germany now saying such an escalation should be considered.

The so-called “anti-coercion” instrument, as it’s known, would also potentially allow the bloc to limit US companies’ access to financial service markets in the EU.

So what happens after 1 August could be even more explosive.

But there is every reason to believe that a tit-for-tat escalation is unlikely, at least for long.

The very reason Donald Trump rowed back on his “liberation day” tariffs in April, allowing 90 days for talks, was likely the dire financial market reaction that followed news of the widespread duties.

You have a president demanding interest rate cuts (at a time when inflation is on the rise due to the impact of tariffs) in a bid to boost flagging economic growth.

Mr Trump says his trade war is all about boosting US manufacturing jobs but, at the end of the day, no powerbase of voters is going to accept a threat to the value of their investments for long.

No big US company will stand by and see its sales suffer.

TACO? It’s a solid bet.

World

Plane crashes into college campus in Bangladesh – at least 19 people dead

Published

8 hours ago

July 22, 2025

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Plane crashes into college campus in Bangladesh - at least 19 people dead

At least 19 people have died after a Bangladesh air force plane crashed into a college campus, the military said.

The aircraft crashed into the campus of Milestone School and College in Uttara, in the northern area of the capital Dhaka, where students were taking tests or attending regular classes.

The pilot was one of the people killed, and, according to the military, 164 were injured in the incident.

The Bangladesh military’s public relations department added that the aircraft was an F-7 BGI, and had taken off at 1.06pm local time before crashing shortly after.

Video shows fire and smoke rising from the crash site, with hundreds looking on.

The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.

Bengali-language daily newspaper Prothom Alo said that most of the injured were students with burn injuries.

Citing the duty officer at the fire service control room, Prothom Alo also reported that the plane had crashed on the roof of the college canteen.

Rafiqa Taha, a 16-year-old student at the school who was not present at the time of the crash, told the Associated Press that the school has around 2,000 students.

“I was terrified watching videos on TV,” she added. “My God! It’s my school.”