International- The IDF said it won't investigate its claim that Hamas killed and decapitated babies at a kibbutz.
- A spokesperson said that testimonies provided by soldiers were sufficient evidence.
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces told Insider that the military won't seek further evidence for its claim that Hamas decapitated babies in Israel.
He said it would be "disrespectful for the dead" to do so.
The spokesperson, Major Nir Dinar, was responding to widespread criticism that the IDF had spread a sickening claim about its enemies without demonstrating that it was true.
On Tuesday, Dinar told Insider that babies' bodies had been found at the Kfar Aza kibbutz, and that some had been decapitated.
He said then that the IDF would not confirm the exact number of babies killed or how many had been beheaded.
Insider was unable to independently confirm what was found, but several international media outlets also reported the claim.
A journalist from Israeli broadcaster i24News was the first to say that babies had been killed, saying there were 40.
The journalist, Nicole Zedeck, later nuanced her claim. She said in a post on X that "soldiers told me they believe 40 babies/children were killed. The exact death toll is still unknown as the military continues to go house to house and find more Israeli casualties."
Laura Cellier, an i24NEWS news anchor, said in a post Wednesday that "we stand firmly behind our reporters." She said they were "told by 3 separate IDF officials that around 40 babies & small children were murdered in Kfar Aza, some burned, some beheaded."
CBS News later reported that Israeli body-recovery teams had discovered beheaded babies and children in kibbutzim in southern Israel.
CBS also reported that Yossi Landau, the head of operations for the southern region of Zaka, Israel's volunteer emergency response organization, told the outlet on Wednesday that he had personally seen beheaded babies among the dead.
Zaka did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Meanwhile, CNN's Nic Robertson, live from Kfar Aza, also appeared to address the claim, saying: "There were so many murdered members of this Kibbutz. Men, women, children, hand bound, shot, executed, heads cut." He did not elaborate further.
The Anadolu Agency, a Turkish state-run news agency, reported that the Israeli army said to its reporters that it had no information to substantiate the allegation that "Hamas beheaded babies."
In the Tuesday statement provided to Insider, Dinar said that the IDF "can not confirm any numbers," but described the situation at the kibbutz as a "massacre" in which children were "brutally butchered in an ISIS way of action."
On Wednesday, Insider approached Dinar again to ask if the claim would be fully investigated to provide details of the numbers and their manner of death.
He responded by saying: "We're not going to investigate the condition of bodies and even if we did we won't comment publicly about the condition of our civilians's bodies. And babies."
In a phone call, he said he would not "give away numbers" of the number of babies.
"The war crimes that Hamas committed are obvious to the world and are seen in the world and I don't need to provide any proof of that and I'm not going to," Dinar said. "It's disrespectful for the dead."
He said the position was out of respect for the families of those whose babies had been killed.
He said the claim of decapitated babies was made based on what soldiers on the ground had relayed to him and others in the military.
"Let your readers know that a soldier who handled the bodies, that was his claim," he said. "I don't have an evidence and I'm not looking for one."
He pointed Insider to a soldier making the claim on camera, who relayed what he had seen after he handed bodies on the field.
In that footage, David Ben Zion, Deputy Commander of Unit 71, told i24NEWS that Hamas militants "cut head of children, cut head of women."
"They chopped heads of children and women," says David Ben Zion, Deputy Commandee of Unit 71 to our @Nicole_Zedek, while reporting from the massacre in Kfar Aza in southern Israel pic.twitter.com/IHSB0ywMbF
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) October 10, 2023
"This enough of an evidence, in my perspective," Dinar said. "Me, as a military, I'm not going to investigate or count the number of babies whose throats were slit or decapitated."
Ben Zion also told BBC News that Hamas gunmen killed families, including babies, adding that some of the victims were decapitated, without specifying who was beheaded.
"They killed them and cut some of their heads, it's a dreadful thing to see," he said, per the BBC.
Itai Veruv, a major general with the IDF, told CNN that he witnessed Hamas militants "go from apartment to apartment, from room to room and kill babies, mothers, fathers in their bedroom."
Reporters, given a tour of Kfar Aza, also saw dead bodies lining the streets, as well as abandoned, crushed baby cribs.
The New York Times reported that soldiers and rescue workers at an unspecified kibbutz saw that "scores, possibly hundreds, had been slaughtered here, including grandparents, infants and children."
Since Saturday, at least 1,200 people, including children, were killed in Israel, according to the IDF.
As of Wednesday, at least 1,055 people, including children, had been killed in Gaza since Israel began its retaliatory strikes, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Israel's Ministry of Defense — which oversees the IDF — did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.