When Rabbi Israel Weiss opens the doors of the refrigerated containers holding the bodies of hundreds of victims of the Hamas attacks the smell is overwhelming, but he said that most of all, he feels the suffering.

The former military chief rabbi came out of retirement to become one of the leaders of an Israeli operation to identify the more than 1,400 dead from the raids by Hamas fighters on October 7 that have plunged the rivals into a new war.

Teams of doctors, dentists, forensic experts and volunteers are working around the clock to identify bodies that were still arriving at the Shura military base, near the central town of Ramla, on Sunday, eight days after the attacks. Four other centres are carrying out similar work, officials said. Hundreds of bodies waiting to be identified or to be taken for burial are stored in containers lined up in the base next to a tent where the teams work.

Parts of the identification operation at Shura were shown to reporters on Sunday as Israel steps up preparations for an expected invasion of Gaza. Masks have to be worn when the container doors are open because of the overpowering smell of death.

“I open the door to the cooling containers, I see the bodies I smell the odour, I let it fill my lungs and my heart but what I feel is their pain and the loss,” said the rabbi.

Infant victims 

Mr Weiss and other staff at the identification centre said that there were signs that many of the victims had been tortured, raped or abused.

“Never in my life have I seen horrors that are behind us today,” he said as he stood in front of some of the containers, with each holding up to 50 bodies.

“I have seen babies, women and men beheaded. I have seen a pregnant woman with her belly torn open and the baby cut out,” he alleged.”A lot of the women who were brought here were raped,” Mr Weiss added.

Hamas, who lost an estimated 1,500 fighters in the attacks, has dismissed allegations that those killed in the attacks were abused. The Israeli government has already said that some children were tied up and burned and some victims were hiding in air raid shelters that Hamas fighters threw grenades into.

DNA samples, fingerprints and dental records are all used to identify the victims. Almost 90 per cent of the 286 soldiers killed in eight days have been identified, but barely half of the civilians, officials said.

Horrific sights 

Senior Staff Sergeant Avigayil, who gave only a first name, told reporters there were signs that some of the bodies had been booby-trapped.

“Nothing has prepared us for this,” she said when recounting the abuse of the bodies that volunteers had seen. 

Like the sergeant, Captain Maayan, a dentist and reservist taking part in the identification, broke down in tears as she told of the harrowing process. “We see horrific sights,” she said also telling of signs of torture and abuse.

“We hear the screams and the cries of the babies losing their parents.”

Ms Mayaan said one victim she had identified had been a patient at the Tel Aviv clinic where she works. Psychologists and social workers are also taking part to help the identification teams at the end of each day. But the military, who say there are at least 126 people held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, has warned that it could take weeks to get complete figures on the number of victims and put a name to each one.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Hamas has threatened to execute one hostage every time Israel drops a bomb, without warning, on a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip, Reuters said Tuesday, as the increasingly bloody war between the two sides rolls into a fourth day with no end in sight. The group has 150 hostages – including children and a Holocaust survivor – grabbed from border towns and kibbutzim in attacks that began early Saturday.

Hamas spokesperson Abu Ubaida said, “Every targeting of our people without warning will be met with the execution of one civilian hostage”. AFP reported that four hostages have already died (it is unclear if they were Israelis or other nationals) but also that they were killed during Israeli air strikes.

The hostages present a significant problem for an Israeli government that has vowed to respond to Hamas’ attacks with a “massive” assault and “unprecedented force”; Palestinians are bracing for a vicious response after Tel Aviv called up over three lakh soldiers, including reservists, ahead of a ground assault.

READ | NDTV Explains Why Gaza Is An ‘Open-Air Prison’ With No Escape

Public opinion has, so far been firmly with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He has the full support of the opposition too; ex-PM and current Leader of the Opposition, Yair Lapid, told NDTV Monday, “Nobody cares about politics right now… it doesn’t matter.”

READ | “Nobody Cares About Politics Right Now”: Israel Opposition Leader To NDTV

However, some experts feel Israelis will not “forgive” their leader if ensuring hostages’ safety, and rescuing them, is not a priority. “The citizens’ attitude would be ‘you have failed to ensure our security, bring us the hostages back’,” Sylvaine Bulle, a French sociologist studying Israel, told AFP. 

Ms Bulle also predicted tension between politicians and the military if hostages were killed.

Will the Israel government risk public sentiment in its bid for revenge for Hamas’ attacks? 

According to Kobi Micheal, a researcher from the Tel-Aviv based Institute for National Security Studies, “Hostages cannot be first priority. With all the sorrow… Israel will (address the) hostage issue only (when it has) the upper hand and when Hamas (is) defeated… not a second before.”

Reuters has also said Qatari mediators are negotiating the hostages’ release in exchange for 36 Palestinian women and children being held in Israeli prisons. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry confirmed to Reuters it is involved and sources told the news agency talks are “moving positively”.

There are contradictory reports, though; Hamas sources in Qatar told AFP there is “currently no chance for negotiation on the issue of prisoners or anything else”.

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On Monday Mr Netanyahu declared war on Hamas and said, “Hamas terrorists bound, burned and executed children. They are savages. Hamas is ISIS…” Israel Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, on Monday ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza; “No electricity, no food, no water, no gas…”

The Gaza Strip – 365 sq km large and home to 2.3 million people – is already one of the world’s most locked-down places. It is also the third most densely populated space in the world.

READ |Hamas Outmaneuvered Israel’s Surveillance Prowess By Going Dark

Over 1,600 people have died, more than 6,000 have been injured since the war began on Saturday. Fifteen deaths have also been reported from the West Bank, where Palestinians clashed with Israeli forces. The United Nations has said over 1.3 lakh have been displaced so far.

With input from agencies

Yoni Asher last spoke to his wife on Saturday morning, when she called from her mother’s home in southern Israel near the Gaza border. “She told me terrorists had infiltrated the home,” he said. “The phone got disconnected.”

He last saw her later in the day – in a video circulating online. She and their daughters, 3 and 5 years old, were huddled with others on a flatbed in the back of a vehicle. Men with guns ushered them off.

Yoni Asher’s wife, Doron Asher Katz, 34, is one of an unknown number of Israelis who have been captured and presumed to be held as hostages after an unprecedented invasion by Hamas militants of southern Israel, taking control for a time of multiple communities and at least two military camps, and killing hundreds. Videos posted online show armed men marching or dragging men and women through the streets, some elderly, some bloodied. 

Israeli authorities have responded with force in Gaza, killing more than 300 people and bombing buildings. On Sunday morning, Israel was still trying to regain control of seven communities and an army camp, IDF spokesman Richard Hecht said.

It’s unclear how many hostages have been taken. Hamas has said it was holding dozens of commanders and soldiers. Israeli media reported that the number was at least 100, including elderly people and children. The Israeli military confirmed that hostages had been taken but wouldn’t give a figure.

The hostage taking has struck a particularly emotional nerve in Israel and makes the country’s response more complicated – and, potentially, more deadly. “This will shape the future of this war,” reserve military spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told the BBC, and later reiterated to Bloomberg.

Instagram and other channels were flooded with faces of missing people and pleas for information. Many of those identified were young attendees of an outdoor desert rave. One of those attending was Almog Meir Jan, who at age 21 had recently finished his army service. 

“He called my mother at 7:45 a.m. and told her there were rockets, that they have started running and that he loves her,” his sister, Geut Harari, said in a phone interview. “Since then, we have not been able to reach him.”

His family identified him, alive, in a clip sent around on the Telegram messaging app. The footage showed young men illuminated by a bright light, cowering on the floor, some with their hands behind their back and others attempting to shield their faces from the light.

Several wars have been set off by abductions and killings of just a handful of Israeli soldiers or civilians. In 2006, the capture of three soldiers – one in Gaza, two in Lebanon – ignited the deadly Second Lebanon War with the Iran-backed Hezbollah. Eight years later, the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in West Bank by Hamas gunmen led to a 50-day war in Gaza. In 2011, to free soldier Gilad Shalit from Gaza, Israel freed more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, several of whom went on to carry out deadly attacks against Israelis.

This time, many of those taken aren’t soldiers but civilians.

Several family members say Israeli authorities haven’t responded to calls for help.

“No one spoke to me,” Yoni Asher said at around 11 pm, after 12 hours of frantic calls, and after tracking his wife’s phone to Khan Yunis, a city in Gaza. “No one contacted me. I called the police, I called the Home Front Command, the local councils.” He also contacted German authorities, because his wife has German citizenship. So, like many others, Asher turned to social media and local television stations. 

In one situation, hostages were being held for more than 24 hours in Be’eri, an Israeli kibbutz with a population of about 1,000 located in the northwest Negev desert near the eastern border with the Gaza Strip. Tens of them at least were held hostage by armed militants at the settlement’s common dining hall and later released.

After he woke up and realized what was going on, Goni Godard, 22, pulled a bandana over his face and headed through Be’eri toward his parents’ home. A man pointed a gun at him but didn’t shoot; Godard thinks it’s because with the bandana, they couldn’t tell which side he was on. Walking through the kibbutz, he saw bullet-laden bodies in the streets before coming to the place that used to be the home of his parents, Many Godard, 70, and Ayelet Godard, 60.

“Everything was burned and destroyed,” he said through sobs. They weren’t there.

He hid in the home until 4 pm when the Israeli military arrived. He’s still looking for his parents.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)