By Anadolu staff
ISTANBUL (AA) – Palestinian group Hamas on Tuesday rejected accusations by a UN special envoy for its fighters of sexually assaulting Israeli women during its Oct. 7 cross-border attack into Israel.
Pramila Patten, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, said in a report on Monday that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred during the Hamas attack.
Hamas dismissed the accusations by the UN envoy as “false” and “baseless.”
The report “came out after failed Israeli attempts to prove this false accusation to demonize the Palestinian resistance and cover up…horrific human rights violations committed by Israeli occupation forces against Palestinian women and girls,” it said in a statement.
Last month, UN experts expressed alarm over "credible allegations" of egregious human rights violations that Palestinian women and girls continue to face in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Hamas said the allegations “clearly contradict with testimonies of freed Israeli hostages of good treatment by Hamas fighters while in captivity.”
“This false accusation will not succeed in erasing the ugliness and horror of the Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip,” the Palestinian group said.
Israel has launched a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack, which Tel Aviv said killed less than 1,200 people.
More than 30,600 Palestinians have since been killed and over 72,000 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.
The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel is accused of genocide by the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
*Writing by Ahmed Asmar