Hamas terrorists gang-raped an Israeli woman before one shot her in the back of the head while he was still having sex with her, according to horrifying witness testimony.
Israel’s Lahav 433, a crime-fighting umbrella organisation known as the ‘Israeli FBI’, has been working to gather evidence of sexual assaults during the incursion.
The investigations are part of the force’s effort to prosecute Hamas terrorists who were captured during the attack on October 7, which left more than 1,400 Israelis dead.
Investigators say interviews with suspects have revealed that they planned to reach the centre of Israel as well as take control of a settlement for an extended period of time, while taking the residents hostage and planting mines in the area, local newspaper Haaretz reports.
However, this plan was thwarted by Israeli security forces, reserve units and civilian groups who fought back against the Hamas invaders, the report says.
While gathering evidence, Lahav 433 also took testimony from a woman who said she witnessed the gang-rape and murder of another young woman.
Haaretz reports the witness told officers of how she watched the shocking attack unfold as she hid from Hamas gunmen wearing military uniforms.
‘As I am hiding, I see in the corner of my eye that [a terrorist] is raping her,’ the witness told investigators. ‘They bent her over and I realised they were raping her and simply passing her on to the next [gunman].’
The witness says the victim was ‘alive’ and ‘on her feet and bleeding from her back. But then the situation was that he was pulling her hair. She had long, brown hair.’
The woman told officers one of the Hamas gunmen ‘shot her in the head while he was raping her… didn’t even lift his pants’.
Her testimony has been reported in a number of Israeli news outlets. It was one of thousands of pieces of evidence gathered by the police.
Another male witness said he didn’t see the rape itself, but confirmed the other witness told him at the time what she had seen.
Until now, reports of sexual violence carried out by Hamas terrorists were based on testimonies from first responders, who arrived in settlements on October 7 in the aftermath of the attacks.
Once there, they said they found bodies of naked women, with signs of abuse.
Zaka rescue and recovery personnel, the ultra-Orthodox volunteer organisation that helped to retrieve and identify bodies, have detailed a number of atrocities, including sex attacks.
It is understood that Shin Bet (the Israel Security Agency) and the police have held hundreds of people suspected of being involved in the massacre in custody.
Under Israeli emergency regulations, they need only be brought before a court every 45 days, with Israeli officers working to piece together the events of October 7.
Police seized the explosives they carried into Israel.
Haaretz reports that a senior police source has said most of the suspects have admitted their part in the atrocities, while a few have denied their involvement.
It said a few claimed they entered Israel looking for work.
The publication said that Israel’s State Prosecutor’s Office is intending to prosecute the Hamas terrorists for crimes committed during the massacre, even without evidence tying them to a specific act.
Israel plans to charge them with being party to the crimes through the participation in the assault across the border from Gaza, and attacks on civilians and soldiers.
Haaretz says anyone found to have been in a specific community will be charged with cases of murder, rape and abuse in other communities too.
However, the Israeli publication says efforts to link suspects to specific crimes have been harder because many bodies weren’t photographed due to the condition they were found in, and the chaos in the aftermath of the attack.
In addition to collecting testimonies from survivors, police are scanning 50,000 video files to identify specific suspects, with the help of facial recognition software.
It is understood police have managed to connect some suspects to murders.
One suspect said he had murdered a man with a hammer and described a tattoo on a woman’s body. Investigators located the woman, who was injured but not killed, as well as the man’s body with wounds that might have been caused by a hammer.
Source: Daily Mail
