The Israeli government on Monday released recordings of eyewitness testimonies detailing rapes and other atrocities Hamas terrorists committed during their Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Yaari Cohen, who is affiliated with Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, released a video compilation of testimonies from anonymous witnesses who described Hamas's abuses against civilians such as rape and mutilation of genitals.
"They laid a woman down," said one witness, "and I understand that he is raping her. He was basically shifting her position, and then they pass her on to another person." That witness also described an instance where a victim was "not dressed" and a terrorist "cuts her breasts. He throws it on the road. They are playing with it."
Another witness described genital mutilations toward both women and men.
"There was a lot of gun wounds there," she said. "Shooting was targeted at sexual organs. We saw that a lot. They had a thing with sexual organs both in women and in men. The women we received, they were civilian. We mainly saw either breast amputation or gun shots just to the breast, simply shooting from one side of the breast to the other."
Another witness described finding the dead body of a woman with "a blood stain on her genitalia." Israel showed such footage to the United Nations on Friday, Cohen added on X in a reply to his post containing the compilation.
The U.N.'s women's group, U.N. Women, was at first reluctant to condemn Hamas for the reported rapes. An official with the group said last week that it always supports "impartial, independent investigations into any serious allegations of gender-based or sexual violence" when she received a question regarding why U.N. Women could not specifically condemn Hamas's sexual violence. The group days later released a statement condemning "the brutal attacks by Hamas on Israel on 7 October," adding that it was "alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks."