UN says rapes committed during October 7 attack

A UN inquiry has found sexual violence occurred during the October 7 attacks on Israel and there is credible evidence that hostages have been raped.

Mourners at the site of the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Reimn in southern Israel. Picture: AFP

A United Nations report says there are grounds to believe sexual violence, including rape, occurred during the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and that there is clear and credible evidence that female hostages were raped.

The UN also said that a lack of forensic evidence collected from the scene of the attack means the true extent of violence committed against women may never be fully known.

Pramila Patten, the UN Secretary General’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, recommended a comprehensive investigation, which she said her team’s roughly two-week trip to Israel didn’t set out to undertake.

The team reviewed over 5000 photos and 50 hours of audio and video footage of the October assault provided by various Israeli state agencies and open sources. They also conducted interviews with survivors and witnesses of the October 7 attack, as well as with first responders and released hostages.

“The true prevalence of sexual violence during the [October 7] attacks and their aftermath may take months or years to emerge,” said Ms Patten in a press briefing. She added they “may never be fully known” given that sexual violence tends to be underreported in conflicts due to trauma, stigma and fear faced by survivors, but also because in this case many victims were killed.

The report said the team didn’t have enough information to attribute the sexual violence and rape to Hamas or any other armed groups. “Such attribution would require a fully-fledged investigative process,” it said.

Hamas officials have denied its fighters raped women. It didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the UN findings.

The UN report marks the first independent inquiry by an international body outside of Israel to look into reports of sexual violence against women during the attack by Hamas, which killed 1200 people, mostly civilians. About 250 others were taken hostage by Hamas, which has been designated a terror organisation by the US.

Ms Patten and her team also travelled to the West Bank to hear concerns over the treatment of Palestinians held in detention.

The UN report urged Hamas and other armed groups to immediately and unconditionally release all hostages and to ensure protection from sexual violence.

The Wall Street Journal found evidence of sexual violence on October 7 through photographs, interviews with first responders, survivors, families of victims and forensic experts. Photos viewed by the Journal taken by first responders on the scene show bodies were mutilated, including sex organs. The bodies of women and girls displayed signs of sexual assault.

Israeli investigators are reviewing a large trove of photographs and have interviewed thousands of witnesses to reconstruct the events on October 7 with an eye toward building a legal case against those responsible.

In addition to sexual violence, the UN report found widespread mutilation of bodies, including “attempted and actual decapitation, numerous gunshot wounds, and various other forms of extensive violence”.

The Wall Street Journal viewed photographs of at least four victims whose heads were partially or fully decapitated.

The UN team said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that sexual violence occurred at multiple locations during the October 7 attack, including rape and gang rape in at least three locations – the area of a music festival near the Gaza border, a highway and a kibbutz.

In at least two instances, the UN said witnesses saw the rape of two female corpses. Other sources at the music festival reported seeing multiple women and a few men murdered with hands bound behind their backs or tied to trees and poles. Some had gunshot wounds to the head.

Some were entirely naked, while others were naked from the waist down, said the report. The report said such instances, while circumstantial, were suggestive of sexual violence.

Some women who escaped the music festival fled to the nearby Kibbutz Re’im, where the UN said witnesses and digital evidence showed a woman was raped outside a bomb shelter.

The UN said there was clear evidence of “sexual violence, including rape, sexualised torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” against some women and children held in Gaza. The report said it has reasonable grounds to believe the violence is ongoing. It said the findings were based on first-hand accounts of released hostages.

In a pause in fighting in November, Hamas released over 100 women and children. About 130 hostages remain, although some have been declared dead and more are believed to be dead.

The report highlighted the challenges Israel faced in conducting a thorough investigation on October 7 and in the days following the attack, as the military fought to expel Hamas from Israeli territory.

Rescue operations prevailed over the collection of evidence of crimes, the report noted. Some corpses were booby-trapped. Others were burned, making it impossible to determine what happened to many of the victims.

Also, Israeli first responders, including a group of ultra-Orthodox men, weren’t trained in processing crime scenes and instead collected body parts for Jewish burial. They often covered or dressed corpses in a gesture of respect before photographing bodies. That created limited photo evidence of what happened to victims.

Israeli authorities welcomed Ms Patten’s visit, after initially criticising the UN for failing to speak out against sexual violence against women on October 7. Israeli officials at one point refused to co-operate with researchers of the United Nations Human Rights Council in their investigation of violence including alleged gender-based crimes.

The UN mission also visited Ramallah to hear Palestinian concerns about the treatment of Palestinians in Israeli detention, including invasive body searches, threats of rape and prolonged forced nudity. It interviewed four recently released Palestinian detainees.

It didn’t seek to independently verify the accounts; it called for the claims to be investigated.

It said that any information gathered during Patten’s visit “will complement information already verified by other UN entities on allegations of [sexual violence] in Gaza and the occupied West Bank” for a UN report on the issue of sexual violence perpetrated in conflict.

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Lior Haiat said Israel welcomed Ms Patten’s “definitive recognition” of sexual crimes by Hamas, but rejected her report’s call to investigate the Palestinian claims. To do so would create an “intolerable equivalence,” he said.

The Wal Street Journal