HELL IN THE HOLY LANDS

ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR: DEATH TOLL NEARING 2000

- ANDY LINES and CHRIS HUGHES

>>40 babies butchered in kibbutz raid
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HAMAS killers massacred up to 40 babies in an Israeli border village, it emerged yesterday, as another day of escalating violence claimed hundreds of lives.

The bodies of the infants, some of whom had been beheaded, were found by Israeli soldiers in the community of Kfar Aza.

US president Joe Biden offered his support to Israel and described the Hamas attacks, which began on Saturday, as "sheer evil".

Last night, Israel launched another aerial blitz on densely populated Gaza, leaving hospitals unable to cope with the dead and injured.

Palestinian officials said 900 people have been killed since Saturday, including 140 children and 100 women, while Israel said its death toll since the incursions is now 1000.

Describing the scene in Kfar Aza, less than two miles from the Gaza border, Israeli Major General Itai Veruv said: "It's not a war. It's not a battlefield. It's a massacre. It's something I've never seen in my life.

"It's something we used to imagine from our grandfathers, grandmothers in the pogrom in Europe."

Diplomatic efforts were under way last night to free some of the hostages held by Hamas.