“They were burned while tied together”: The gut-wrenching work of identifying victims of the Hamas attack

It has been over a week since the horrific slaughter in the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip, and the dust is still settling. But at Israel's National Medical Forensic Center, examiners are working around the clock to identify as many of the 1,400 bodies of victims as they can.

It appears to be an impossible task at times, as Dr. Chen Kugel, the director of Israel's National Center of Forensic Medicine, explained to a gathering of journalists. 

"I don't know if we will be able to take DNA from these samples because they are very charred,” he said. "Some of the victims were not shot as no metal fragments were discovered in their bodies, but they were burned. It's like a crematorium.”

He showed one example of two people whose bodies were discovered together in a burned-out safe room. “This is an adult with a child. The adult was hugging the child, and a metal wire might have been used to tie the two bodies together. They were burned like this," Kugel told i24NEWS.

Since October 7, the center's examiners have checked over 950 body bags. Some of them contain the remains of more than one victim which was from the border communities or the desert music festival, as well as bodies of security forces personnel.

About 500 bodies have been identified so far, but there are still close to 300 bodies that remain unidentified, and more keep coming in.

"We have been getting samples from the deceased,” said Nir Adam Sharon, a DNA analyst. “We are sampling them for the right amount of material we will need to extract DNA from. Then we will use that to create a genetic profile and compare it to the family members who are waiting for answers,” he explained.

Many of the bodies have bullet wounds, some in their hands, as they were trying to protect themselves in their final seconds. There are also burnt babies and headless bodies. Some of the remains are in such mutilated condition that they may never be identified.

"This is a baby mattress. Just from the size of the spot you can see that he or she was bleeding in the bed," said Nurit Bulbil, the DNA lab manager at the center.

"I have never seen anything like this,” Dr. Kugel exclaimed. “This is heart-wrenching, you can see innocent people that were just butchered. People that were shot when they were tied, people burned to death, people that were tied together," he continued.

With a ground invasion looming, there is also a growing movement of people denying that Hamas terrorists committed such horrific acts of violence and torture.

But hundreds of people, from first responders to the medical examiners at this center, have seen it, and they are sharing the gut-churning stories and images to silence the deniers.

Dr. Kugel showed journalists the pictures of dead bodies, including babies. “You've seen it. And I don't know how many were decapitated, we see people without heads, but things happened,” he concluded.