The Reality Of Hamas Invasion Into Israel: Pathologists Tell Of Unimaginable Savagery

All those who question the unimaginable savagery of the Hamas attack against Israel must read the words of these forensic scientists struggling to identify the 297 bodies so brutalised as to be unrecognisable

SAM GREENHILL and PHOTOGRAPHER ROLAND HOSKINS IN TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

The charred remains were so disfigured that at first they did not realise it was two people.

But when pathologists gently began to examine, they could see the bodies were those of an adult and a child. And they were hugging tightly.

That is how it had ended for them, trapped in a room as Hamas terrorists set fire to their home. As the horror of burning to death came to them, the adult had nothing left to offer but to hold that terrified child in their arms.

And as unbearable as that is, it is by no means an isolated case here at Israel's National Centre of Forensic Medicine, where the bodies of the victims of the Hamas attack are being identified. Scientists charged with this grim task told me it is common to have to carefully separate the fused remains of two helpless people who, in their final moments, had found all they could do was embrace in death.

No wonder several professional pathologists broke down in tears yesterday as they tried to explain their vital work to me.

This is the real-life version of Silent Witness, the television drama about pathology experts piecing together forensic clues to solve a case.

Of the 959 bodies so far brought to the Shura military base, the ones that are hardest to identify are taken to the forensics centre here in Tel Aviv, where teams of scientists are working around the clock to find out who they are.

They are acutely aware that the tormented families of the missing are beyond desperate – they just need to know.

The work itself could scarcely be more upsetting. Some victims were shot then set on fire, others trussed up with wire cords and condemned to a burning hell.

As of yesterday, there were 297 bodies so hideously brutalised as to be unrecognisable to anyone. It is the wretched job of these pathologists to try to work it out.

Sometimes, all they have to go on are a few fragments of bone. That is literally all that is left of someone.

Chen Kugel, director of the centre, showed me a pile of bones. 'There are several people in there,' he said. 'Just parts of a skull. A cheek bone. This is all that remains of them. Their bodies are gone.'

He showed me photographs of a man shot from behind. 'You can see from his wrist marks that he was handcuffed behind his back. And then executed.'

And then came the utterly unbearable. Dr Kugel wept as he described how they had received remains so disfigured they had to perform a CT scan to understand there were two bodies. One big, one small.

Showing me the scan, he said: 'You can tell from the shapes of their spines that it is an adult and a child, and they are sitting together and they are hugging tightly together.

'In their final moments. They were burnt to death like this. Cremated alive in their own home, clutching one another.'

Dr Kugel, a forensic pathologist for 31 years, kept pausing for deep breaths but could not stop his tears flowing.

'This is heart-wrenching and difficult to see, even for people like me who have been doing this for so many years,' he said.

Everywhere I looked as I toured this morgue yesterday was a vision of hell. The sights are too distressing to describe and the putrid stench of death will stay with me for days. Many of the slaughtered innocents have gunshot wounds through their hands, as they tried in vain to defend themselves from the bullets.

Dr Kugel said: 'It is horrific. It's so big. And there are so many containers – it is like a shipping port – and they are all full of bodies. It is so terrible. So many ... it is the magnitude of the cruelty.'

His team's job is to try to identify the victims so their anguished families can be informed as soon as possible, and establish how they died.

In each room I visited, exhausted teams were doing their utmost with blackened bodies, fragments of bone and whatever else they could find. The victims range from the very old to the very young. In one corridor I passed three body bags that were a third the size of the adult ones.

What about beheaded babies? Yes, said Dr Kugel, it was true.

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