UN hears shocking accounts of sexual violence by Hamas during Oct 7 attacks

The United Nations on Monday heard accounts of brutal sexual violence committed during the Oct 7 attack by Hamas. The meeting was organised by former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg and was attended by several women’s rights activists, UN officials, Israeli officials and frontline workers.

Hamas has denied all sexual violence allegations, but many Israeli first responders and women's rights activists have shared gruesome accounts of rape and mutilation. Sandberg told the UN gathering that “silence is complicity.”

The crowd of 800 people, including diplomats from dozens of countries, watched videos from police interviews with first responders, describing what they saw on Oct 7 and after that.

Speakers present at the gathering also attacked UN Women and the wider women’s rights section to investigate or condemn these crimes.

WARNING: Readers may find some of the details in this story distressing.

Horrifying accounts of sexual violence from Oct 7

Two first responders from Israel addressed the UN in person. Simcha Grienman, who collected victims’ remains from the sites of attacks, described a woman’s body that he found naked from the waist down, leaning over a bed.

The corpse had been booby-trapped with a live grenade, hidden in the woman’s hand, he added. Among the bodies he recovered were two people who had suffered genital mutilation, one a woman who had “nails and different objects” in her genitals, the other so badly damaged “we couldn’t even identify if it’s a man or a woman”.

Another first responder, Shari Mendes, who prepares bodies for burial, said her team leader “saw several female soldiers who were shot in the crotch, intimate parts, vagina, or shot in the breast.”

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand described a video of a fresh bloodstain on the crotch of a teenage hostage, visible when she was dragged out of a Jeep in Gaza soon after her abduction, as evidence of sexual assault. She reiterated other speakers calling for activists to condemn Hamas.

Several videos of sexual violence have been made public by Israeli authorities from Oct 7 as captured by Hamas body camera footage, CCTV and material uploaded to social media by civilians and first responders. Testimonies of the Supernova rave attack survivors describe similar stories of women being raped before they were shot.

A UN commission of inquiry investigating war crimes on both sides of the Israel-Hamas conflict has said it would focus on sexual violence by Hamas in the October 7 attacks on Israel and was about to launch an appeal for evidence, Reuters reported last week.

(With inputs from agencies)

Disclaimer: WION takes utmost care to accurately and responsibly report ongoing developments on the Israel-Palestine conflict after the Hamas attacks. However, we cannot independently verify the authenticity of all statements, photos and videos.