The National Forensic Center of Israel (Abu Kabir) in Tel Aviv invited press representatives to talk about the brutality of the war, which broke out on October 7, after Hamas attacked Israel. Journalists were at the center, in order to see the horrors of the war up close and also to report what they saw medical examiners who take over the thousands of corpses.
The themedialine.org he was there and relayed what he saw to Israel’s National Forensic Center. The forensic pathologists, including Israeli officials as well as volunteers from abroad, were visibly overwhelmed by the evidence before them. Despite every effort to remain objective and detached, many broke down in tears throughout the day. The descriptions of the pictures are creepy.
During the initial press conference, according to themedialine.org, the forensic team showed images from their investigations. Among the images were those of charred hands with signs that revealed how the hands of the victims were tied behind their backs with metal wire, before they burn alive.
Perhaps the most disturbing image, was a completely charred mass of flesh, which at first glance could not be considered as having ever belonged to a human being. Only after a CT scan, experts were able to discern the inhumanity of the image. There, they appeared two spinal cords, one of which belonged to an adult, while the other belonged to a young person. Most likely, it is a parent and child tied together with metal wires, in a final embrace before burning them.
Dr. Chen Kugel: “It’s hard not to feel the tragedy”
“When you do this job, you distance yourself,” he told The Media Line Dr. Chen Kugel, head of Israel’s National Forensic Center. “But then you learn the stories and connect with the people. It’s hard not to feel the tragedy. She is so big. And when I go to the Shura camp [όπου συλλέγονται για πρώτη φορά τα πτώματα των νεκρών στο Ισραήλ] and I see containers like the ones you see at the port – but they are all full of corpses… And you hear the stories – that behind their charred bodies, something terrible happened – it’s very difficult. I’ve seen a lot in my 31-year career, but the size and toughness here is awesomeKugel added.
Afterwards, Dr. Chen Kugel explained that “the percentage of charred corpses we received is high. Many have gunshot wounds to their hands, indicating they put their hands over their faces to defend themselves. Many were burned alive in their homes. … We know they were burned alive because there is soot in their trachea, in their throat – which means that they were still breathing when they were set on fire».
The only mercy, Kugel said — if there is one — is that the burn victims likely died of carbon monoxide and soot inhalation before the fire killed them. Kugel also explained that the age range of the victims varies from 3 months to 80 or 90 years. Many corpses, including infants, are headless.
To the question if they had been decapitated, Kugel answered yes. Although he admits that, given the circumstances, it is difficult to ascertain whether they were decapitated before or after death, as well as how they were decapitated, “if they were cut with a knife or blown up,” he explained.
Dr. Nurit Bublil: “It could have been my children, my parents, me”
Kugel wasn’t the only one who got emotional when discussing the tragedy. “We distance ourselves because we have to work, but from time to time it gets to you,” she said in the same medium. Dr. Nurit Bublil, head of the center’s DNA lab. “Yesterday, I opened evidence from a house in a southern kibbutz, and there was a popular recipe book covered in blood. … I have this same book and it makes you think that it could have been my kitchen, my children, my parents, me. You can’t avoid it“, he said.
Additionally, Israel’s small population creates the fact that no one is far from the undercurrents of carnage. “My sister has a close friend who is still missing,” Bublil said, standing next to a bloody mattress from a baby’s crib. The DNA from the mattress will be used for the trying to identify a brutally disfigured and missing infant.
“I got the message today from my neighbor,” Bublil continued. “She asked me if I could help because her good friend’s father-in-law’s husband, father, two nieces and wife were also murdered and have not yet been identified».
This is the essence of the current mission of the forensic pathology center involving approximately 200 specialists. Medical examiners, anthropologists, radiologists and others from Israel as well as from the USA, Switzerland, New Zealand and other parts of the world have come not only to determine the causes of death of the victims but also to identify the bodies for burial.
350 bodies remain unidentified
The Israeli medical examiner Dr. Hagar Mizrahi he explained that “the Jewish people must bury their dead as soon as possible.” But by now, almost two weeks have passed since the October 7 massacre and approximately 350 bodies remain unaccounted for. “So people here are doing what they can to help and identify the more serious cases that come in.”
Four parties across the country are currently working to locate and release the bodies for burial. Israel’s National Forensic Center works for the collection of DNA samples and the identification of the most serious cases. It is also where all DNA samples from other locations come for additional testing. And in the Shura camp near Ramla, in central Israel, all the dead are first collected. Shura currently owns approx 950 body bags. The word “bags” is written here instead of “bodies” because it is not clear how many victims are inside them.
“The remains of more than one person may be in a single bag,” Kugel explained, “and a person’s remains can be in multiple bags. When we examine the remains, we know there are multiple individuals because we see duplicate parts. For example, if we see two bones from the left upper jaw, then they cannot come from the same person.”
And in many cases, bones without even a dot of extractable DNA are all that’s left. For that reason, Kugel said the families of some victims are right to fear the worst. “We hope that with the CT scan and biopsies we will be able to reduce the number of undiagnosed to less than 200. But some people we will never find. We will never recognize them. And people have to be prepared for that.”
Speaking personally, Bublil said she wants people to know that “in general, Hamas enjoyed the killings». According to Bublil, “it was not a battle, not a military conflict, not a state conflict, not a political conflict. Hamas enjoyed the killings so much that it did everything it could to celebrate the killings. They celebrated the burning of houses with civilians inside who did nothing to them. They enjoyed grabbing an 18-year-old girl from a party, a festival, dragging her into a car and driving her to Gaza. And who knows what happened to her in between. They enjoyed and celebrated death. … These are monsters. They are not human… They were not merciful to anyone. No one who was alive who met them survived. You do”.
Source: News Beast
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