Raz Cohen, a survivor of Hamas' October 7 attack, shared some disturbing details of the rape and murder of a woman he witnessed. Mr Cohen, who was attending the Nova music festival in southern Israel with his girlfriend Maya, said he witnessed the gruesome rape of a young Israeli woman who was brutally murdered by five men.
Speaking to CNN, the 24-year-old claimed he saw five men get out of a white van while he was hiding after Hamas operatives attacked the Israeli music festival. The men caught a woman and started forcibly removing her clothes, he said.
“After they pulled the clothes off, one of them started to rape her. After he raped her, he took a knife and killed her, murdered her. After he did it, he continued to rape the dead body.” Mr Cohen said the men were laughing throughout. “They always laughed. I think it was for fun. They murdered a lot of people for fun.”
"I still remember her voice, screams without words," Mr Cohen had said in a previous interview with The New York Times. After the rape, Mr Cohen told CNN that the group attacked a couple, both killed with knives and an axe. Feeling like he was on a firing range with bullets coming from all directions, he ran across the open desert field.
"I ran across the open field, and I was very close to some girl," he said. "When I passed her … I heard that she fell on the ground. I'm looking back … and I saw that she got shot in the head … I looked at the girl, but I can't help her, so I keep running away until I get to the bush." Mr Cohen had to wait for nine hours in the bush for rescuers to arrive.
His girlfriend of two months, Maya, was also killed during the October 7 attack after she tried to flee with a friend.
Rami Shmuel, an organiser of the music festival, told CNN that he saw female victims naked as he escaped, leaving him with no doubts about what happened to them. "Their legs were spread out, and some of them were butchered," he revealed.
A combat paramedic reported seeing the bodies of two teenage girls in Kibbutz Be'eri, claiming that at least one of them had been raped. "Her pants are pulled down toward her knees, and there's a bullet wound on the back side of her neck near her head," he described. "There's a puddle of blood around her head."
While Hamas has vehemently denied allegations of sexual violence, the Israeli government has reported instances of rape during the attack on the music festival and nearby kibbutz communities. The grim toll of the assault included over 1,200 casualties and more than 200 hostages.
Following the October 7 attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched what's been described as the deadliest attack on Gaza in years, killing over 22,000 Palestinians, including a vast number of kids and women. According to a Human Rights Watch report, almost 1.9 million people – 85 per cent of Gaza's population – are displaced after the Israeli bombardment flattened houses, schools and hospitals.