'It was a pogrom' The day horror and tragedy came to the kibbutz

The smell of death hits you at the entrance to Be’eri kibbutz. Until Saturday morning Be’eri had a population of 1,200, the largest of the 12 villages that make up the Eshkol regional council , which runs along the border with Gaza.

- Quique Kierszenbaum

Now it is a place indelibly associated with horror and tragedy, as one of the centres of the massacre undertaken by the militant Islamist group Hamas in southern Israel .

Be’eri, once popular with Israelis as a weekend getaway with its art gallery and nearby mountain biking trails, had by Tuesday been turned into a war zone, the bloated bodies of the Hamas terrorists who attacked this place still dotted around the kibbutz, and tanks and armoured cars at the entrance where Hamas smashed in.

In the distance detonations could be heard coming from the direction of Gaza, outgoing artillery firing close by from the positions now occupied by the army.

Be’eri, founded two years before the state of Israel, was once a pleasant place to live with houses and apartments set apart among the trees, and grassy verges joined by little sandy roads. Now the homes are broken and violated.

In some places the doors of the surviving houses stood open as if the residents had simply left to go for a coffee at the kibbutz cafe, pictures of the families that lived there pinned with magnets to fridges.

In other places it was clear that the Hamas militants who stormed Be’eri had set fire to buildings to drive out the occupants who were hiding there , to kill or capture. Mostly to kill.

Building after building had been destroyed, whether in the Hamas assault or in the fighting that followed, nearby trees splintered and walls reduced to concrete rubble from where Israeli tanks blasted the Hamas militants where they were hiding.