A U.N. team reported information on multiple claims of sexual assaults in the Hamas-led attack on Israel.
A United Nations report released on Monday said that it had found grounds to believe that sexual violence occurred against women during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel and evidence that hostages being held in the Gaza Strip were also assaulted. It called for a full investigation.
The report issued by the U.N. Secretary General’s special envoy on sexual violence in conflict came in response to multiple accounts of sexual violence during the Oct. 7 attack, as well as allegations by Palestinian officials that Palestinian women in detention and in the West Bank had been assaulted. The report asked that Israel grant access to U.N. officials to conduct thorough investigations of the Palestinian accounts.
From late January to early February, the U.N. deployed a team of experts to Israel and the West Bank led by Pramila Patten, the secretary-general’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict. Ms. Patten’s office said at the time that its representatives planned to gather information from survivors, witnesses, freed hostages and Palestinians recently released from detention.
In their report, the experts said they had found “reasonable grounds” to believe that sexual violence occurred during the Hamas-led incursion into Israel, including rape and gang rape in at least three locations: the Nova music festival site and its surroundings, Road 232, and Kibbutz Re’im.
“In most of these incidents, victims first subjected to rape were then killed, and at least two incidents relate to the rape of women’s corpses,” the report said.
The report said it found “a pattern of victims, mostly women, found fully or partially naked, bound, and shot across multiple locations,” and although the evidence was circumstantial the pattern could indicate some form of sexual violence and torture.