Israeli military forensic teams found multiple signs of torture, rape and abuse on the bodies of some of the 1,300 victims of last week's Hamas terror attack, officials said.
"We've seen dismembered bodies with their arms and feet chopped off, people that were beheaded, a child that was beheaded," a reserve warrant officer identified as Avigayil told reporters on Saturday, according to Reuters.
About 90% of the military dead have been identified and forensic teams are about halfway finished with identifying civilians, Rabbi Israel Weiss, the former army chief rabbi, said. He is one of the officials overseeing the identification of the dead and said that many bodies showed signs of torture and rape.
Avigayil confirmed that multiple cases of rape were found through forensic examination of the bodies, which are being stored in refrigerated containers.
"We do the identification with all the means that we have," a military dentist identified as Capt. Maayan said. "We see them in severe stages of abuse. We see gunshots and we see signs that are purely torture."
Hamas, the U.S. State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip, has denied the allegations. The group has been circulating videos rejecting the allegations and even showing their fighters playing with kidnapped Jewish children in an apparent attempt to alter the narrative about its treatment of captives.
Israel said it recovered the bodies of about 1,500 Hamas terrorists in Israel after the group launched its mass attack on the country last week, resulting in the deaths of about 1,300 people, including women, children and the elderly, as well as at least 29 U.S. citizens.
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