Eleven days on, medics identify boy and woman ‘incinerated’ in Hamas onslaught

JERUSALEM: A boy and a woman who were among the scores of people killed by Hamas gunmen in an Israeli border village have been located and identified, 11 days after the cross-border attack from Gaza, the medical assistance and casualty recovery group Zaka said.

Remains of the two newly discovered victims were found during searches of a house that had been burned down in Beeri, a kibbutz, or communal farm, Zaka said late on Wednesday.

“Their bodies were incinerated after they were murdered,” it said in a statement, without providing names for the two or elaborating on any possible relationship between them.

Israeli officials had previously given a death toll of at least 108 for Beeri - around 10 per cent of its population. At least a dozen other Israeli communities were also overrun by the gunmen.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday gave visiting US President Joe Biden an updated Oct 7 death toll of 1,400.

Israeli officials say the numbers keep slowly rising as forensics enable identification of especially ravaged corpses.