Israel probes sexual violence committed by Hamas during October 7 attack

The Israeli police have begun investigating cases of sexual violence committed by Hamas on October 7 based on forensic evidence, video and witness testimony.Witness testimonies say that women and girls who were caught in the rampage were sexually and physically assaulted by Hamas terrorists.According to Israeli Police Superintendent Dudi Katz, officials have recorded over 1,000 statements and collected more than 60,000 video clips related to the October 7 attacks that contain accounts of people who saw women being raped. However, it is not clear whether any of the rape victims have survived.The witness accounts will most likely lead to persecution, but for now, documentation is the primary mission, Police Commissioner Shabtai Yaakov said.Meanwhile, Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a human rights law expert at Hebrew University, has formed a team to document the evidence of atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7, saying that the world seems to be overlooking the violence incited against Israeli women and girls.“We’ll never know everything that has happened to them. We know that most women who were raped and who were sexually assaulted were also murdered,” Elkayam-Levy told CNN."It’s much worse than just silence or an insult to us as Israeli women and to our children and to our people. When they are failing to acknowledge us, to acknowledge what happened here, they are failing humanity,” she added.Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has found arms and ammunition stored inside a kindergarten and an elementary school in northern Gaza.A video posted by IDF on X shows troops finding a stash of mortar bombs in a kindergarten. Additionally, soldiers also found Hamas weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, hidden inside the Al-Karmel Elementary School.