Hamas Leaves Trail of Terror in Israel

They were killed waiting for the bus, dancing at a festival, doing morning chores and hiding as best they could. Searching bullet-riddled houses, streets and lawns, Israeli soldiers are still finding them.

The soldiers, retaking control of the kibbutzim, towns and settlements near the Gaza Strip that came under attack by Palestinian terrorists over the weekend, have recovered body after body after body.

Hamas gunmen, hitting more than 20 sites in southern Israel, have killed more than 1,000 people, including women and children, and abducted an estimated 150 more people. Officials from Israel, the United States, Europe and the United Nations have condemned the violence in the starkest terms, with the U.N. secretary general saying, “Nothing can justify these acts of terror and the killing, maiming and abduction of civilians.”

The evidence emerging from Israeli sites near Gaza is being found by the authorities, emergency workers and survivors tentatively returning to their homes. It includes security camera footage and cellphone videos, photographs from residents and professionals, and the accounts of witnesses who survived the initial attacks.

The material shows that Palestinian gunmen attacked Israeli civilians in all the mundane places of a Saturday morning in southern Israel — at an outdoor festival and in their homes, on familiar roads and in the middle of town — places where soldiers and the police were as surprised by the violence as neighbors, families and friends.

The videos below contain graphic imagery.

Kibbutz Be’eri

More than 100 people killed, including children

The assault on Be’eri began around 6 a.m. on Saturday, with security cameras at the kibbutz gate showing two armed men trying to break through. When a car pulls up on the road, the two men fire at its occupants and then enter the kibbutz.

By 7 a.m., at least eight armed men were inside the kibbutz. About two hours later, gunmen can be seen in a video removing three bodies from the ambushed car. Other video appears to show several Israelis being taken captive, and later apparently dead on the street.

Israeli emergency workers eventually removed the bodies of more than 100 people killed in the kibbutz, said Moti Bukjin, a spokesman for the ZAKA relief organization, which ran the effort. “It was horrible work — there were killed children there,” he said, adding that there were dozens of dead gunmen in the town, as well. “We still haven’t gone through all of the homes.”

The Nova Festival

More than 100 people killed

Just after dawn on Saturday, hundreds of Palestinian gunmen who broke through the barricades between Gaza and Israel sped through farmland in the border area, reaching a festival that had gone through the night. They opened fire.

“Smoke and flames and gunfire,” said Andrey Peairie, 35, a survivor. “I have a military background, but I never was in a situation like this.”

The gunmen abducted an unknown number of people from the event, about three miles from the Gaza border. One video shows a person — on the ground by a car but moving — being shot by a man with a rifle and then lying still. Another video verified by The New York Times shows Hamas members driving off on a motorcycle with an Israeli woman squeezed between them, screaming as her boyfriend is marched off on foot, his arm wrenched behind his back.

The village of Kfar Azza

Soldiers and rescue workers said scores or possibly hundreds of people were killed

Four days after the attack on Kfar Azza, a village just across some fields from the border with Gaza, Israeli soldiers moved from house to house, checking for traps and pulling out the dead. Journalists with The New York Times who traveled to the village saw bodies on pathways and lawns, and in houses and other locations.

“It’s not a war or a battlefield; it’s a massacre,” said Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv, an Israeli commander on the scene. “It’s something I never saw in my life, something more like a pogrom from our grandparents’ time.”

The city of Sderot

At least 20 civilians killed, as well as about a dozen soldiers, firefighters and police officers

The attack on Sderot, a city about a mile from Gaza, also began early Saturday morning, with at least two pickups carrying armed men — and a mounted machine gun — into the city. Civilians were shot in their cars or on their feet. They were shot under an overpass and while apparently waiting for the bus. At one bus stop, seven civilians were found dead.

“Everyone died,” a man can be heard saying in one video. Videos filmed by residents in Sderot captured the gunmen firing on civilians, battling with the police in the street and taking over the police station.

Nir Oz and other communities near Gaza

At least dozens, if not scores, of people killed in the border region

Details are still emerging from many communities for miles around the Gaza Strip, and the authorities are still tallying the toll. But videos, photos and survivors have portrayed many attacks across the region.

One 30-minute video that was posted on Facebook and whose location was verified by The Times shows Palestinian gunmen crossing the border fence and heading toward the southern community of Nir Oz. The video follows the group to what appears to be a kibbutz. The sounds of loud shouting and gunshots follow.

The video eventually shows the inside of a room, where at least six bloodied bodies lie on the ground. One gunman opens fire on the bodies, and the video cuts off.

Israel’s military said on Tuesday that it did not have an estimate of how many people were killed or kidnapped in Nir Oz.

But when the army gathered all the survivors in a kindergarten after Saturday’s attack — which lasted at least eight hours — one resident, Irit Lahav, and her 22-year-old daughter, Lotus Lahav, noticed that many of the community’s residents were missing.

“We realized that it’s only about half of the people here,” the younger Ms. Lahav said. Residents estimated that the kibbutz had about 350 to 400 people when the attack started. Only about 200 left in buses, she said.

Arie Itzik, a retired nurse, went back to Nir Oz on Sunday to help with the bodies. He said on Tuesday that some were completely burned.

“Some people,” he said, “I could not recognize them.”

There are also indications of major tolls in other communities near Gaza.

In Nahal Oz, Noam Tibon, a retired general who traveled there to help his son, said he and Israeli soldiers had found the streets strewn with bodies, some Palestinian and some Israeli. In Alumim, photos showed about a dozen body bags lined up outside a building, though it was not immediately clear who had been killed.

Reporting was contributed by Riley Mellen, Emma Bubola, Malachy Browne, Haley Willis, Axel Boada, Arijeta Lajka, Dmitriy Khavin, Aaron Boxerman, Patrick Kingsley, Isabel Kershner, Alexander Cardia and Alan Yuhas.