Victims of the Hamas-led massacre in Israel were said to have been found partially or fully naked with their hands tied, with evidence of gang rapes followed by execution, and genital mutilation, according to a new report.

The Dinah Project’s report, commissioned to ‘counter denial, misinformation and global silence’, will be published on Tuesday and illustrate how ‘Hamas used sexual violence as a tactical weapon of war’ during its October 7, 2023 incursion, according to The Times, which reviewed the report.

The project, part-funded by the British government, brings together all available evidence in finding ‘clear patterns emerged’ in how sexual violence was perpetrated. The report concludes violence was ‘widespread and systematic’ during the attacks.

It is said to include previously untold descriptions of alleged violence at the Nova music festival near the border with Gaza, on the Israeli highway Route 232, at the military base at Nahal Oz, and the Re’im, Nir Oz and Kfar Aza kibbutzim.

It includes testimonies from 15 hostages who have returned to Israel since the assault, a survivor of alleged attempted rape at the Nova music festival, and interviews with witnesses, first responders and therapists treating traumatised survivors.

‘Dozens’ of victims were said to have ‘often’ been found tied to ‘trees or poles’. 

Many returning from captivity in Gaza also described ‘forced nudity, physical and verbal harassment, sexual assaults and threats of forced marriage’, it says.

‘Many of the witnesses spoke of the victims being shot and them still trying to rape a dead body,’ said Sharon Zagagi-Pinhas, a former chief military prosecutor of the Israeli army who has been working with project founder Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari.

People flee from the site of the Nova music festival during the Hamas-led attack on October 7

Abandoned cars at the site of the Nova music festival after Hamas’ attack on October 7 

Video showed a group of people being ambushed by three gunmen who are seen running towards them carrying what appear to be Kalashnikov assault rifles

The report was motivated by perceived inaction from international groups, pushback on claims members of Hamas would not rape women, and the suggestion the Israeli government had ‘weaponised’ the issue to justify its retaliatory campaign in Gaza, The Times explains.

The report is said to call on the UN secretary-general, Antonio Gueterres, to further investigate and include Hamas in a UN blacklist of groups designated for using sexual violence as a weapon of war.

The issue has been contentious since reports first emerged of harrowing sexual violence. Critics of Israel’s government, including self-described feminist groups, have pushed back on media reports describing testimonies of victims as being unfounded and relying on non-credible witnesses.

Others have asserted that the issue has been ‘complicated’ by the ‘fact that accusations of sexual assault have also been wielded as a tool of war – and as an (often lethal) weapon of racism and colonialism’.

International groups, including independent observers, have collated evidence they say determines Hamas did commit sexual violence, however.

The United Nations special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Pramila Patten, issued a report last March summarising a visit to Israel with a team of experts. She concluded that Hamas had employed sexual violence and that this violence continued against hostages held in Gaza.

The assessment aligns with claims put forward in the Dinah Project report.

Video footage taken by Hamas and shared by the IDF showed gunmen raiding Israel in 2023

An Israeli officer walks on the ground of the Nova Festival in Re’im, Israel, 17 October 2023

Patten said that the team was unable to establish the prevalence of sexual violence, assessing it may take ‘months of years to emerge and may never be fully known’.

‘What I witnessed in Israel were scenes of unspeakable violence perpetrated with shocking brutality,’ she recalled, presenting her findings from her visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank.

She said that her team had met with families of hostages and members of communities displaced from kibbutzim. It conducted interviews with 34 individuals, including survivors and witnesses of the October 7 attacks, released hostages, first responders and health and service providers.

The team also visited four attack sites and reviewed more than 5,000 photographic images and some 50 hours of the attacks. 

‘It was a catalogue of the most extreme and inhumane forms of killing, torture and other horrors,’ including sexual violence, she said.

The team also found ‘convincing information’ that sexual violence was committed against hostages, and judged reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may still be ongoing against those in captivity, as of March 2024.

While there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in the Nova music festival site, Route 232, and kibbutz Re’im, reported incidents of rape could not be verified in other locations.

The team determined that at least two allegations of sexual violence in kibbutz Be’eri, widely reported in the media, were unfounded.

The report criticised how the authorities had gathered evidence, and called for more cooperation with UN organisations in investigations.

The interior of a kitchen and dinning room area in a civilian house in the Jewish community of Kibbutz Be’eri along the border with the Gaza Strip during a press tour on October 20, 2023

Demonstrators hold a banner featuring images of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, during a protest to demand the immediate release of hostages held in Gaza, in Tel Aviv, July 5, 2025

The UN Special Envoy had been presented with a report from the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel before filing their conclusions, which detailed ‘sadistic’ crimes alleged to have occurred in several locations during Hamas’ assault.

‘Hamas terrorists employed sadistic practices aimed at intensifying the degree of humiliation and terror inherent in sexual violence,’ the report assessed. ‘Many of the bodies of sexual crime victims were found bound and shackled.’

‘The genitals of both women and men were brutally mutilated, and sometimes weapons were inserted into them. The terrorists did not stop at shooting, they also cut and mutilated sexual organs and other body parts with knives.’

The testimonies included claims Hamas gunmen repeatedly stabbed an injured woman while they raped her; that victims had nails, grenades and knives inserted into their sexual organs; and how survivors fleeing the festival witnessed ‘girls whose pelvises were simply broken from being raped so much’. 

The Israeli military said earlier this year that Hamas had killed 378 people at the Nova festival alone during the attack that sparked the Gaza war. Around 1,200 people were killed in total.

Smoke rises in Gaza after an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, July 7, 2025

Relatives mourn their loss as the bodies are transferred to al-Ahli Baptist Hospital for funeral procedures before burial, after the Israeli attack on the Zaytun neighborhood in eastern Gaza, on July 5, 2025

The conflict has seen widespread tragedy in both Israel and Gaza. The death toll in Gaza passed 57,000 in recent days, according to the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry.

The UN has accused Israel of ‘deliberately and unashamedly imposing inhumane conditions on civilians’ in Gaza, assessing that the population of some 2.1 million face the risk of famine. 

Israel has separately overseen a major expansion of settlements in the West Bank, and hundreds of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territory have been killed since October 7, according to UN tallies.

Israeli families are still grieving the loss of loved ones. Scores of people were taken back into Gaza as hostages on October 7 and still it is believed there are 20 living captives still in the Palestinian enclave.

The war has seen wider conflict between Israel and Hamas-aligned organisations, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, resulting in further missile exchanges and bloodshed.