Wearing a blue flak jacket, Lord Cameron stepped gingerly over a pile of crushed terracotta tiles outside a bullet-riddled cottage as he toured Be’eri, a kibbutz targeted by Hamas in the Oct 7 attacks on Israel.

Lord Cameron was accompanied by Eli Cohen, the Israeli foreign minister, and several Israel Defense Forces officers.

The Foreign Secretary described what he saw in Be’eri, where the terror group massacred more than 100 people and kidnapped many others, as “absolutely horrific”.

Lord Cameron said: “I wanted to come here to see it for myself; I’ve heard things, I’ve seen things I will never forget.”

He arrived in Israel a day before a ceasefire deal was due to take effect. Under the terms of the agreement, fighting will stop at 7am on Friday, with a first batch of hostages held by Hamas set to be freed in the afternoon.

Critical supplies of aid will also be allowed to flow into the Gaza Strip, which has been devastated by Israel’s offensive.

Lord Cameron urged both sides to follow through with the deal after it was pushed back by a day at the last minute late on Wednesday evening.

“This is a crucial opportunity to get hostages out and aid into Gaza, to help Palestinian civilians who are facing a growing humanitarian crisis,” he said. “And I hope and would urge everyone involved in that agreement to make sure that it happens.”

Lord Cameron was accompanied by Eli Cohen, the Israeli foreign minister, and several Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers, who described the horror that unfolded during the Hamas attacks.

Standing in the charred remnants of one of the community’s houses, an officer told Lord Cameron how Hamas had deliberately torched the building on Oct 7, burning some of those inside to death. Those who escaped were shot in the head by gunmen lurking outside, the officer said.

Lord Cameron was later seen walking outside the house. Nearby, a white plastic high chair stood abandoned on the side of a gravel path.

After his tour of the kibbutz, the Foreign Secretary met Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Isaac Herzog, the president, telling them he stood “with the people of Israel” as they endured “a huge amount of trauma”.

“I’m not sure anyone can fully understand and share that trauma, but I remember the worst days of being prime minister was when British hostages were taken in Syria, and so many of them lost their lives in the most gruesome, terrible fashion,” he told Mr Herzog.

“I remember the effect that had on me as prime minister and thinking about that, and so perhaps know a tiny bit of what your nation is going through.”

Lord Cameron met counterparts from Arab and Islamic countries in London on Wednesday to discuss the conflict.