Israeli official says government cannot confirm babies were beheaded in Hamas attack

“There have been cases of Hamas militants carrying out beheadings and other ISIS-style atrocities. However, we cannot confirm if the victims were men or women, soldiers or civilians, adults or children,” the official said.

Tal Heinrich, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Wednesday that babies and toddlers had been found with their “heads decapitated” in Kfar Aza.

US President Joe Biden appeared to confirm that information. In a roundtable with Jewish community leaders on Wednesday, he said: “I have been doing this a long time, I never really thought that I would see… have confirmed pictures of terrorist beheading children.”

An IDF spokesman, Jonathan Conricus, later in the day said terrorists had likely carried out decapitations of babies in the Be’eri kibbutz.

“We got very very disturbing reports that came from the ground that there were babies that had been beheaded… I think we can now say with relative confidence that unfortunately this is what happened in Be’eri,” he said.