Shederot, Israel:
Yossi Landau has spent decades collecting corpses in Israel, but he nearly reached breaking point in recovering the remains of people killed by Gaza militants in the country’s deadliest attack. Landau woke up Saturday to the sound of sirens, a moment he had become “accustomed to” as Israelis took shelter from incoming rocket fire.
Only later did he realize that the launches were “just a cover, because the main part is the invasion” by Hamas militants, who crossed the Gaza border to kill an estimated 1,200 people.
From his home in Ashdod, a coastal city north of Gaza, he recalled seeing “the abomination” as he rushed to the scene.
“I saw cars overturned, I saw people dead in the streets,” Landau said in Sderot, a town near the border where several residents were killed.
He has 33 years of experience as a volunteer for Zaka, an organization that recovers the bodies of people who have suffered unnatural deaths.
But as gun battles raged between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces, Landau said he witnessed violence he had never seen before.
“A stretch of road that should have taken 15 minutes, it took us 11 hours because we went and picked everyone up and put them in a bag,” the 55-year-old said.
Abandoned cars that were set on fire or riddled with bullet holes still litter the landscape of southern Israel.
After already loading dozens of bodies into refrigerated trucks, Landau and other volunteers reached Beeri, a kibbutz with about 1,200 residents, five kilometers from Gaza.
“I felt like I was falling apart, not just me, my whole crew,” he recalled after entering the first house and finding a dead woman.
“Her abdomen was torn open, there was a baby there, still connected by the umbilical cord, and stabbed,” Landau said.
The Zaka volunteer said he saw several civilians, including about 20 children, who had their hands tied behind their backs before being shot and set on fire.
“We saw that some victims were in the position of having been sexually abused,” he added.
Affected festival site
More than 100 people died at the kibbutz, while about 270 people died at the nearby Supernova music festival.
While the bodies of the revelers were removed from the site, their belongings were left strewn across the dusty grass.
When an AFP journalist visited on Thursday, bean bags, artwork and a bag of energy drinks were among the belongings on the ground as soldiers walked by.
Blood splattered the inside of a car not far from a sign for hiking trails through the woods.
Although Israel says it has regained control of the border area, the army continues to report firefights with remaining militants.
The military announced that soldiers had “killed a terrorist” on Thursday around a kibbutz a few kilometers away from the festival site, shortly after gunfire was heard from the site.
In response to the Hamas attack, Israel has hit Gaza with 6,000 bombs so far, according to military figures.
According to health officials on Palestinian territory, the attacks killed 1,417 Gazans.
Faced with the scale of the violence, Landau said he “feels nothing right now.”
“We just take our feelings, with our jobs, and separate them. And that’s what we have to do,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)