Joe Biden on Wednesday said he had seen photos from Israel this weekend of ‘terrorists beheading children’ – confirming Israeli soldiers’ stories of almost unimaginable horror.

Biden held a meeting with Jewish community leaders in the White House on Wednesday, and said he had been shocked by the brutality of the Hamas attack.

At least 1,200 Israelis were killed in Saturday’s carnage, which begun when Hamas militants crossed from Gaza into Israel and murdered people at a music festival and in their homes near the border.

‘This attack was a campaign of pure cruelty, not just hate, but pure cruelty, against the Jewish people,’ Biden said.

He added: ‘I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.’

Joe Biden is seen on Wednesday during a roundtable discussion with leaders in the Jewish community in the Indian Treaty Room at the White House

Hamas left a trail of devastation at a series of kibbutzes near the border with Gaza, including children’s beds soaked in blood

His comments end speculation about the truth of the claim of beheaded children, which was originally made by an IDF soldier, David Ben Zion a Deputy Commander of Unit 71 of the Israeli army.

Ben Zion told i24 News: ‘We walked door to door, we killed a lot of terrorists. They are very bad. They cut heads of children, they cut heads of women. But we are stronger than them.’

The IDF later said they could not confirm his account.

But Biden’s statement ended the debate.

Nicole Zedeck, the i24 News reporter who spoke to Ben Zion, on Tuesday addressed skepticism over her reporting.

‘I witnessed some of those scenes with my own eyes as we were walking through this community that may be a quarter of a mile from the Gaza border, the atrocities that were still left behind, children, cribs, baby cribs overturned on their side, splattered with blood. Horrible, horrible images,’ she told The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show.

She said the soldiers she spoke to told her of the horrors.

‘There’s no words to describe what they’ve seen,’ said Zedeck. 

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‘I mean, babies’ heads cut off. That’s what they encountered when they came there. 

‘So as horrible as it is and I wish that it wasn’t true. And I see how those images and those words are hard to comprehend because it’s hard to comprehend how anyone could commit such heinous, heinous crimes.

‘But that’s exactly what happened in just one of the kibbutz communities.’

Biden on Wednesday called the Hamas attack on Israel ‘the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust,’ and a campaign of ‘pure cruelty’, adding once again that the United States stood solidly with Israel.

The death toll now stands at 1,200 in Israel, including 14 Americans, and another 1,100 in Gaza. 

Hamas is believed to have taken 150 hostages, including Americans, and is threatening to execute them if Israel launches a ground invasion of Gaza. 

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said Wednesday that Hamas militants beheaded soldiers and raped women in their attack on Israel.

Netanyahu, in a late night televised address, detailed some of the atrocities that took place during the attack. 

He said boys and girls were shot in the head and that people had been burned alive.

Netanyahu compared Hamas to ISIS, and vowed that Israel’s retaliation against the terrorist group ‘will reverberate with them for generations.’

Biden and Netanyahu spoke on Wednesday, in what was at least the fourth call between Biden and Netanyahu since Saturday’s attack. 

Biden, after the call, said that Hamas’ attack was reminiscent of the Holocaust.

‘This attack has brought to the surface the painful memories and scars left by a millennium antisemitism and genocide against the Jewish people,’ he said. 

‘And this moment we have to be crystal clear: There is no justification for terrorism, no excuse and the type of terrorism that was exhibited here is just beyond the pale. Beyond the pale.’