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U.N. report: ‘Convincing’ information Hamas raped, tortured hostages

www.washingtonpost.com U.N. report: ‘Convincing’ information Hamas raped, tortured hostages

Expert team finds “reasonable grounds to believe” that sexual violence was committed on Oct. 7, but report stops short of an official investigation.

U.N. report: ‘Convincing’ information Hamas raped, tortured hostages

A team of United Nations experts tasked with gathering information on sexual violence linked to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel found “reasonable grounds to believe” that some victims were sexually assaulted, including rape and gang rape, according to a U.N. report released Monday.

“In most of these incidents, victims first subjected to rape were then killed,” a press release announcing the report’s findings said. “The mission team also found a pattern of victims, mostly women, found fully or partially naked, bound, and shot across multiple locations.”

The 23-page report said the team also found “clear and convincing information” that some of the women and children taken back to Gaza that day by Hamas as hostages were subjected to “rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” There were “reasonable grounds to believe,” it said, “that this violence may be ongoing.”

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