Israeli military official shows remnants of Hamas terror attack
FOX News' Trey Yingst speaks to Maj. Doron Spielman of the IDF near the Israel-Gaza border, where Israeli civilians were killed and others abducted. (WARNING: This footage contains graphic content.)
Maj. Doron Spielman of the Israel Defense Forces showed Fox News viewers on Monday the horrific remnants of a Hamas terror attack in Israel on Saturday, part of a coordinated assault that slaughtered hundreds of Israelis and launched a war.
Just miles from the Gaza Strip along a southern Israel highway, Spielman showed a Hamas vehicle that drove directly out of the Palestinian territory and ambushed a group of people driving through. The Hamas terrorists fired indiscriminately at civilians, Spielman said, and cameras showed the remainder of items that were in civilian cars, including school backpacks, socks, young children's clothing and a cooler from a picnic. There were also zip ties on the road, which had been used by militants to bind the hands of hostages, Spielman said.
"This was a planned massacre of civilians, and there are few places that show it better than you can see it here," he said, also telling Yingst, "They started spraying with heavy machine gun fire all the cars that were on this route."
Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst said the "terror" and "nightmare" the Israelis faced was laid bare by the images of bloody, bullethole-ridden cars. Many Israeli communities, he said, were forced to fight off Palestinian jihadists on their own without military support for hours.
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"This was a coordinated attack to inflict terror on the civilian population," Yingst said. "Hamas was able to take over Israeli military bases and able to push forward deeper into Israeli territory and even today there have been infiltration attempts as Hamas fires thousands of rockets into southern and central Israel."
Hamas, the terrorist organization that governs the impoverished Gaza Strip, launched a surprise attack on Saturday, killing hundreds. More than 800 Israelis have been killed since the fighting began, and among the overall dead include nine Americans.
Hamas terrorists have taken civilian hostages, and Israel has since declared war and ordered a complete siege of Gaza. Israel struck 426 targets in Gaza, blasting residential buildings to the ground, including a 14-story tower that held dozens of apartments as well as Hamas offices in central Gaza City. Israeli forces fired a warning just before the strike.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told President Biden that a ground operation in the Gaza Strip is necessary after Hamas launched deadly strikes on his country.
The remark, made in a phone call between the two leaders, came as Biden raised concerns about Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip if a ground operation should commence, three Israeli and U.S. sources briefed on the call told Axios.
"We have to go in. We can't negotiate now," Netanyahu told the president, according to the outlet.
Netanyahu told Biden that Israel has no choice but to respond with force since a country cannot display weakness in the volatile Middle East, Axios also reported, citing the sources.
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Fox News' Greg Norman and Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.