Reuters
- An NYT investigation detailed horrifying stories of sexual violence by Hamas on October 7.
- The harrowing report shares witness accounts of rapes and mutilations by Hamas militants.
- This story contains graphic details that may be difficult to read.
A harrowing new report by The New York Times detailed horrific accounts of sexual violence carried out by Hamas during its October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel.
Allegations of rape were made almost immediately after the attacks, which Israel said left some 1,200 people dead.
But many of the accounts were not from direct witnesses, sparking debates about whether they could be relied upon.
The Times said it carried out exhaustive work on its investigation, citing more than 150 interviews, video footage, photos, and GPS data.
It concluded that in at least seven locations women and girls appeared to have been the victims of sexual assaults or mutilations.
One witness interviewed by the outlet was Sapir, a 24-year-old accountant who only gave her first name.
She said she saw gunmen rape and kill at least five women while she was hiding near Route 232, around four miles southwest of the Nova music festival, which was targeted by Hamas on October 7.
She told the outlet that she saw "about 100 men" as they dished out weapons and passed wounded women between them.
In a particularly disturbing and graphic account, Sapir said that she saw the attackers cut the breast off of one woman as she was being raped and pass it between them before throwing it on the ground. "They play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road."
"That day, I became an animal," Sapir said. "I was emotionally detached, sharp, just the adrenaline of survival. I looked at all this as if I was photographing them with my eyes, not forgetting any detail. I told myself: I should remember everything."
Another witness, Raz Cohen, said he survived the attacks by hiding in the dried-up bed of a stream along Route 232. He told the Times that he saw five men dragging a young, naked woman across the ground.
"I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words," Cohen said.
"Then one of them raises a knife," he added, "and they just slaughtered her."
The Times reported that it saw photographs of one woman who had "dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin" and footage of two Israeli soldiers who seemed to have been "shot directly in their vaginas."
Other reports have described a widespread pattern of sexual brutality carried on October 7, rather than isolated incidents.
"What I can say with a really high degree of certainty is that it wasn't a few cases. It wasn't here and there, or only on one occasion," said Hadas Ziv, the director of ethics and policy at the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights Israel, for a piece by The New Yorker.
He said: "There were many cases of different gender-based and sexual violence," including "the most extreme gang rapes, mutilation of body parts, putting objects into women's bodies, and having women paraded like trophies when they were taken into Gaza."
Per the Times, there is relatively sparse official evidence because Israeli authorities did not carry out autopsies on many victims.
Authorities said they focused on identifying victims rather than carrying out medical examinations.
Jewish funeral traditions also called for many bodies to be buried quickly.
"This was a mass casualty event," police spokesman Dean Elsdunne said, per the BBC.
"The first thing was to work on identifying the victims, not necessarily on crime-scene investigation. People were waiting to hear what happened to their loved ones."