Hamas attacks kill around 1,160 people in Israel
Hamas on Tuesday dismissed a United Nations report that claimed Palestinian agents committed “sexual violence” during an attack on Israel on October 7, calling the findings merely “false accusations.”
Hamas said in a statement that the report by Pramila Patten, the U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict, “does not record any testimonies from what she calls the victims of these cases.”
“She relied on Israeli institutions, soldiers and witnesses chosen by the occupation authorities to try to prove this false allegation, which all investigations have refuted.”
The report released on Monday said there were “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred on October 7.”
The attacks took place in at least three different locations, and “in most of the incidents, the victims were first raped and then killed, and in at least two incidents were associated with the rape of women’s corpses,” the report said.
The United Nations has faced criticism for being too slow to respond to Israeli accusations of rape and sexual violence against Hamas militants and hostage-taking during the Oct. 7 attack.
According to AFP statistics based on official Israeli data, Hamas attacks resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,160 people in Israel, most of whom were civilians.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 30,631 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry.
According to Israel, some 250 hostages were taken by agents, of whom 130 remain in Gaza and 31 are presumed dead.
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