DEATH TO HAMAS …and if it were up to me, it would be brutal and enduring.
Women raped by Hamas were found with nails driven into their thighs and groin and were passed around by terrorists who slaughtered them after or even during gang-rape, horrifying new witness accounts of October 7 reveal.
New devastating accounts of sexual violence and torture enacted on defenceless Israeli women by Hamas terrorists amid their brutal October 7 attacks have emerged.
Images shown to the New York Times by Israeli authorities showed a woman who had dozens of nails driven into her thighs and genitals in a savage example of mutilation, while other clips displayed the corpses of soldiers and civilians alike who had been either shot or stabbed in the groin.
Another dark image dubbed 'the woman in the black dress' showed the corpse of an Israeli later identified as Gal Abdush.
She is seen splayed on the floor, legs wrenched apart with her vagina exposed, and covered in burns. Her lifeless body was crumpled in the dirt next to the husk of a heavily damaged car riddled with bullet holes.
Both Gal and her husband were slaughtered by Hamas as they tried in vain to escape along highway Route 232, away from the Nova music festival massacre. Their sons, Eliav, 10, and Refael, 7, have been left orphaned.
Meanwhile, several witnesses described seeing many other women raped and killed on Route 232, with soldiers and investigators claiming they discovered bodies around the Nova festival ground who showed signs of abuse in and around their genitals, the New York Times reported.
One witness, named only as Sapir, said she watched in horror from a hiding place in the shrubs just off Route 232 as Hamas gunmen gang-raped several women, stabbing them in the back when they protested and cutting off their breasts.
'One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road,' Sapir said.
But these latest accounts only bring into sharper focus the inhuman treatment of Israeli civilians at the hands of Hamas attackers, adding to a mountain of evidence already exposed.
Many survivors and witnesses to October 7 have said Israeli women were raped - whether they were alive or dead - and tortured in unimaginably cruel ways.
One man who hid in a pit during the attack on the Nova music festival said he heard someone nearby screaming as she was raped, while a combat paramedic said they saw the body of a young woman with her legs open and pants pulled down.
A volunteer tasked with finding and collecting bodies also said in written witness testimony that he found women in their homes tied to the bed. One had been tortured,' a knife stuck in her vagina and all her internal organs removed', he wrote.
Earlier this month, an Israeli official investigating the attacks said Hamas stormed across Israel's border with Gaza with a 'clear order' - to use 'rape as genocide'.
One horrific video testimony came from a woman who was at the music festival, and was shown privately to journalists by Israeli police, according to the BBC.
In it, the woman - named only as Witness S - describes seeing Hamas fighters rape a woman and mutilate her, before the last of her attackers shot her in the head.
The gunmen then continued to rape her after she was executed, the witness said.
During the assault, Witness S told police that the attackers cut off parts of the victim's body, such as her breast, and 'threw it on the street.'
The woman in the video described watching the terrorists as she pretended to be dead. 'I couldn't understand what I saw,' she said.
Her testimony was released last month, and was presented by Israel's police chief.
Another man, who was also at the festival site on October 7, said he heard a woman scream as she was raped by Hamas terrorists.
Ron Freger fled the music festival when Hamas attacked and said he heard a woman screaming for help. 'I was lying in a pit (and) I heard (a girl) yelling: 'They're raping me, they're raping me!' he told the Associated Press.
Several minutes later, he heard gunshots close by and she fell silent, he said.
'The feeling in that moment is one of complete powerlessness. I'm lying in this hole and I have no ability to do anything. I have no weapon, I have nothing, I'm surrounded by other people who are hiding with me and we're completely powerless,' said the 23-year-old from the northern Israeli town of Netanya.
The BBC also spoke to a man who said he heard the 'noises and screams of people being murdered, raped, decapitated'.
In a statement released through a support organisation, he said: 'Some women were raped before they were dead, some raped while injured, and some were already dead when the terrorists raped their lifeless bodies.
'I desperately wanted to help, but there was nothing I could do.'
Israeli ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely has declared Hamas used rape and sexual violence as a weapon against Israeli civilians.
'It was part of Hamas' plan, to use sexual violence against women, and we want to make sure the world understands what we are dealing with. Hamas brutally murdered and raped innocent women,' she told Sky News.
In further testimony, a combat medic told the Associated Press that he came across half a dozen bodies of women and men with possible signs of sexual assault when he reached one of the devastated kibbutzim.
One girl had been shot in the head and was lying on the floor, her legs open and pants pulled down, with what looked like semen on her lower back, said the medic who spoke on condition of anonymity because his unit was classified.
Other bodies had bleeding around the groin with limbs at distorted angles, he said.
He was among a number of responders to detail what they saw in the aftermath of the attack. Their accounts make up much of the evidence of sexual assault.
At the Shura military base where victims are being identified, Shari Mendes, a member of the army reserve unit that deals with the identification and religious burial preparation of female soldiers, said some of the women's bodies came in with little clothing, such as parts of their pyjamas, or just bloody underwear.
She said: 'Our team commander saw several female soldiers who were shot in the crotch, intimate parts, vagina, or shot in the breast.
'This seemed to be a systematic genital mutilation of a group of victims.'
But in the immediate aftermath of the attack, priority was given to identifying bodies and not preserving evidence, making the investigation more challenging.
In many cases, evidence that could be gleaned from the bodies of rape victims has been buried, as Jewish tradition dictates funerals are held shortly after death.
This meant many victims were laid to rest without having been subject to thorough medical examinations.
In other cases, the bodies were in such a bad state that they were difficult to identify, let alone establish evidence of sexual violence.
One serving Israeli soldier, only using her first name Avigayil, told the BBC it was hard to know how many victims had been raped, as some of the bodies had been burnt.
Now Israeli police say they are combing through 60,000 videos seized from the body cameras of Hamas gunmen.
Footage from social media and security cameras will also be looked at in a bid to bring the perpetrators to justice. It has been hard to find rape survivors, however, as many were killed by their attackers.
Police have said they now have 'multiple' eye-witness accounts of sexual assault, and are beginning the process of interviewing the few surviving victims, all of whom are yet to speak publicly.
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