‘It was a pogrom’: Be’eri survivors on the horrific attack by Hamas terrorists

The homes at kibbutz Be’eri are now broken and violated. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

The smell of death hits you at the entrance to kibbutz Be’eri. Until Saturday morning Be’eri had a population of 1,200, the largest of the 12 villages that make up the Eshkol regional council that runs along the border with Gaza.

Now it is a place indelibly associated with horror and tragedy, as one of the centres of the massacre undertaken by the militant Islamist group Hamas in southern Israel beginning on Saturday morning.