05 December 2023 , 22:03
1423
0
Hamas militants carried out genital mutilation by shooting female Israeli soldiers in the "crotch, intimate parts and breasts" during the October 7 massacre, according to the IDF.
Some of the women died with a chilling look of agony on their faces, according an Israeli unit that helped to bless the bodies reported. Army reservist Shari Mendes said that the bodies of many of the female fatalities arrived at the Shura Army Base in central Israel wearing nothing more than their underwear or in "bloody shredded rags".
On Monday, she spoke in New York at a UN event entitled "Hear Our Voices: Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in the October 7 Hamas terror attack". 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. These women arrived with their eyes opened, their mouths in grimaces, their fists clenched."
Some of the female soldiers were left with looks of "agony" on their faces (AFP via Getty Images)She added: "The soldiers that we dealt with had expressions of agony on their faces still. I remember one young woman whose arm was broken in so many places it was difficult for us to lay her arm in the burial shroud, her leg too. In her case the entire left side of her body was shredded, torn apart, most likely by a grenade."
Describing the atoricities in graphic detail, she said the soldiers were forced to make the decision to not show their families the bodies. She said: "Some were shot in the heads were bashed in so badly that their brains were spilling out. Some were shot in the heads so many times at close range that their heads were almost blown off."
Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade
Eyewitnesses reported seeing Hamas militants raping and beating Israeli women at the Nova festival on October 7 (Getty Images)Mendes recalled what she witnessed as she arrived at the base just 24 hours after Hamas's October 7 massacre, which she described as "unimaginable in scale".
She continued: "Body bags were piled to the ceiling, lining the corridors in every room. Refrigerator trucks were waiting outside, also full. "Body bags just kept coming in all shapes and sizes. Many were oozing liquids and the floors were wet.
"The smell of death was already unbearable. It is impossible to overemphasise the number of bodies we were dealing with, the sense of shock and despair."
In the weeks since the incursion, reports have been increasing detailing how Hamas used sexual violence, with many eyewitnesses saying they saw the militants targeting women specifically. Speaking to the Sunday Times, Yoni Saadon, 39, told the Sunday Times that he saw Hamas fighters "beating and raping" a woman with "the face of an angel" at the Nova festival.
"I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or ten of the fighters beating and raping her," he said."She was screaming, 'Stop it — already I'm going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!'"
After they were finished, they laughed and shot her in the head, according to father-of-four Saadon. He then added that he felt it "could have been one of my daughters".