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<\/div>\nNo verified photographs or video footage of beheaded babies have emerged. (Representational)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Kfar Aza, Israel: <\/b><\/p>\n
A senior Israeli army officer said Friday that he had found the body of a decapitated baby in one of the kibbutz communities attacked by Hamas on October 7.<\/p>\n
Colonel Golan Vach, head of the military search and rescue service, told AFP he saw the body of a mother protecting a baby while searching debris at the Beeri kibbutz three days after the attacks.<\/p>\n
“When I pulled it over I saw a decapitated baby. I took it up with my hands and I carried it, and I put it in the body bag. I personally did it,” he said while on a media tour of another kibbutz organised by the military.<\/p>\n
Israel has said 1,400 people were killed and at least 229 taken hostage when Hamas militants attacked kibbutz commmunities, towns and military bases in southern Israel.<\/p>\n
It has said many of the dead were women and children, killed in shocking ways, but it has given no figures.<\/p>\n
Hamas has denied that its fighters killed infants during the cross-border raids.<\/p>\n
The Hamas health ministry said Friday that 3,038 children were among 7,326 people killed in Israeli air raids on Gaza since October 7, in the buildup to a widely expected ground invasion. Israel and the United States have said they doubt the Hamas tolls.<\/p>\n
Allegations that children were beheaded first emerged in Israeli media reports and were at first supported by Israeli officials, though spokesmen later said it could not be confirmed.<\/p>\n
US President Joe Biden also mentioned the beheading of babies but his office later clarified that he had not seen any images.<\/p>\n
No verified photographs or video footage of beheaded babies have emerged since the attacks.<\/p>\n
Speaking on a tour of the Kfar Aza kibbutz, a community of 700 devastated in the attacks, the Israeli colonel told reporters he had been asked since making his gruesome discovery why there were no images.<\/p>\n
“People ask me how come you did not take a picture. I said: ‘I’m sorry, I have children. I have limitations. I have limits. I do not take a picture of a decapitated baby,” Vach said.<\/p>\n
The colonel said a soldier had been “decapitated” at Kfar Aza. Military officials said it was not possible to say whether there were other cases of soldiers or civilians beheaded.<\/p>\n
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n