How October 7 saw the Kfar Aza kibbutz become a 'scene straight from hell'

"Few escaped here with their lives": Correspondent John Ray reported from Kfar Aza on October 10 2023, where Hamas killed men, women and children in their beds

It had been "a little piece of paradise", according to one survivor. But when we saw Kfar Aza, it was a scene straight from hell.

ITV News cameraman Mark Nelson and I were among the first journalists inside.

There was gunfire close by. Israeli soldiers were on alert. The battle wasn’t entirely over.

Bodies of Hamas fighters lay along the roadside. More were stretched out between the ruined houses, decomposing in the sun.

It had taken the Israeli army two days to recapture the village. What they discovered was a massacre.

There was cold fury in the voice of Major General Itai Veruv.

"Door to door, room by room, family by family, people killed in their protection room, or their apartments," he told me.

Like every Israeli, Kfar Aza’s residents had been taken by surprise that Saturday morning of October 7.

Breakfasts uneaten. Coffee undrunk.

Now their bodies were being loaded – with as much care as the mortuary teams could muster - into the back of a lorry.

I counted perhaps a dozen; and watched as more were carried out from a badly burnt house.

Close to the village centre, a neat row of black body bags had been placed on the ground.

In one house I tripped over a corpse partially covered by debris.

Outside another, the body of a woman lay under a blanket. Someone had thought to offer her at least a little dignity in death.

Hers was among the many images Mark recorded that were too upsetting to broadcast.

In the confusion and anger, lurid stories circulated of decapitation, and of babies murdered. They were proved false. But the truth was nightmarish enough.

The civilian death toll was later put at 46. The youngest, 14 years old. Some of the victims were reportedly found with their hands bound.

Gaza was just two miles to the west; level ground the gunmen had quickly crossed through gaps we could see cut in the security fence.

Subscribe free to our weekly newsletter for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning.

Already the Israeli soldiers knew where the battle would take them next.

"We need the world to give us enough time to win this war, because we must finish the terrorists in Gaza," one told me.

I wonder now if he imagined that a year on, the war in Gaza would be unfinished. Or that the human cost would be so appalling, getting on for one thousand Palestinians dead for every civilian victim of Kfar Aza.

A year ago, few imagined an Israel at war in Lebanon and in a high-stakes shoot-out with Iran too.

In so many ways, we have yet to wake from the nightmare of Kfar Aza.

Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To Know...