The UN envoy who focuses on sexual violence in conflict has said there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas committed rape, “sexualised torture,” and other inhumane treatment of women in its October attack in southern Israel.
Pramila Patten, who visited Israel and the West Bank with a nine-member technical team, said there were “reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing” when it came to hostages.
Patten said, based on first-hand accounts of released hostages, the team had “found clear and convincing information” that some women and children were subjected to the same sexual violence during their captivity.
The UN envoy added that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place” at the Nova music festival and its surroundings “with victims being subjected to rape and/or gang rape and then killed or killed while being raped.”
“There are further accounts of individuals who witnessed at least two incidents of rape of corpses of women,” Patten said.
“Other credible sources at the Nova music festival site described seeing multiple murdered individuals, mostly women, whose bodies were found naked from the waist down, some totally naked.”
She said that some had been shot in the head, some were bound and tied to trees or poles.
Patten’s conclusions were drawn from witness testimony and circumstantial evidence which she said “may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence”, but so far no victims of sexual violence have come forward.
The UN envoy called for further investigations, stressing that “the true prevalence of sexual violence during the October 7 attacks and their aftermath may take months or years to emerge and may never be fully known”.
The report comes nearly five months after the October 7 attacks, in which Hamas killed more than 1,100 people and took some 250 others hostage.
Israel has said it believes 130 of the 250 captives remain in Gaza, but that 31 have been killed.
Israel’s war against Hamas has since razed much of the Gaza Strip, killing more than 30,000 people, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry.
This article was originally published on DW.
