Hamas terror victims were tied together, burned, forensic investigators say
Warning: Details in this article contain graphic depictions involving the torture of children and adults.
Video footage released by the Israeli government shows medical experts detailing the gruesome treatment victims of Hamas' terror attack in Israel were subject to before their deaths.
A video shared on the Israel Foreign Ministry's X account Sunday features an interview with Dr. Ricardo Nachman, who conducted autopsies on the bodies of victims who lost their lives in Hamas' attack on Israeli communities near the Gaza border that killed over 1,400 people and injured over 3,000.
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Nachman is the head of the Clinical Forensic Unit and the National Coordinator of Forensic Matters at the Ministry of Health.
Viewer discretion advised.
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) October 15, 2023
We interviewed the experts who conducted autopsies on the bodies of Hamas massacre victims.
“Several bodies were brought to us in a terrible exposition. Most of them were burned.
In this case we can see an adult and a kid that were tied together… pic.twitter.com/BRdAOC7uq7
Nachman spoke in front of a monitor featuring a picture of a computed tomography scan of two victims who died in the attack.
"Several bodies [were] brought to us in a terrible exposition," he explained. "Most of them were burnt."
Nachman shared the backstory behind the victims who had the internal images of their remains displayed on the screen behind him.
"[In] this case, we can see an adult and a kid that were tied together," he said.
Nachman pointed to the left side of the screen: "This is a vertebral column; what we see is an adult body."
As he pointed toward the right side of the screen, Nachman explained that "beside, very, very close with him, the other one is a vertebral ... column of a child, of a kid."
"We can see here also the kid's ribs, and for us, it's obvious that they used a kind of element to ... keep the bodies very, very close like a hug, like a whatever," he added. Nachman also pointed out "some pieces of skull," specifically "part of the almost complete cranium skull." The text accompanying the X post clarified that the "adult and kid" depicted on the CT scan were "tied together (with iron wire)."
Sunday's video was one of many that have circulated on social media in recent days featuring interviews with "the experts who conducted autopsy reports on the victims of the Hamas massacre."
Dr. Chen Kugel, the director of Israel's National Center of Forensic Medicine, discussed what his team is seeing as hundreds of bodies are being brought to the center for examination with journalists this week.
"Some of the victims were not shot as no metal fragments were discovered in their bodies, but they were burned. It's like a crematorium," Kugel said, according to Israeli news outlet i24 News.
A second video, shared by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Director of the Digital Diplomacy Bureau David Saranga features testimony from Nurit Bublil, the head of the Forensic DNA Laboratory at the National Center of Forensic Medicine.
“We never imagined in our worst dreams that we would need to handle many hundreds of samples, of decayed samples, of burned samples, of samples of fingernails with polished nails of young girls.”
— David Saranga (@DavidSaranga) October 17, 2023
We interviewed the experts who conducted autopsies on the bodies of Hamas massacre… pic.twitter.com/an8VJbdQPC
"Nothing prepared us [for] what happened on the last Saturday," she asserted, referring to the terror attack. Bublil insisted that she never predicted the "need to handle hundreds, many hundreds of samples of decayed samples, of burned samples, of samples of fingernails with polished nails of young girls."
A subsequent video, posted Tuesday, showed Kugel highlighting an additional "example [of] the atrocities that we have seen in the tragic event."
Viewer discretion advised.
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) October 17, 2023
We interviewed the experts who conducted autopsies on the bodies of Hamas massacre victims.
“I’ve never seen people that are conjoined together while they are burned trying to hug each other.”
#HamasisISISpic.twitter.com/TcYX2g7Boc
Pointing to the screen, he noted, "This is a burned body, of course, of an adult."
"We know that he was burned while he was alive because we can see soot in the trachea of this person," Kugel said. "And they couldn't shoot him because he was inside a shelter, so they burned the house, and everybody that was inside was burned while he was alive."
Kugel cited the circumstances leading up to the death of that particular victim as "only one example of many atrocities and many horrible, horrific things that we are seeing here in this tragedy." He maintained that until the attack, he "never saw people that are conjoined together while they are burned, trying to hug each other."
While the other two videos were much shorter and almost exclusively consisted of medical analysis and information about the torture endured by the victims of the terror attack, the video featuring Bublil included a message of solidarity designed to serve as a call to action for the Israeli people.
"The Israeli people are much ... stronger than anybody else may think of," Bublil said. "If there is someone that thinks that these events … will break the power or the spirit of the Israeli people, they are strongly mistaken."
"We will come back, and we will get up, and we will handle ourselves, and we will bury our dead. And with help from God, we will get back our ... kidnapped and the hostages, and we will come back."
Bublil vowed that Israel "will remain powerful as strong and stronger than it was" despite the fallout from the recent terror attack.
The Oct. 7 attack drew a strong response from Israel, which launched airstrikes into Gaza and is reportedly reading for a military offensive.
Gaza's health ministry claims that over 3,000 people have been killed by the retaliatory airstrikes and over 12,500 injured. Israel contends that it has targeted Hamas hideouts and infrastructure. Last week, Israel warned over 1 million people in northern Gaza to evacuate to the southern region ahead of a ground invasion.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]
