TEL AVIV - A United Nations team has arrived in Israel to examine reports of sexual violence during the Hamas-led attack on Oct 7 even as Hamas and some critics of Israel continue to reject evidence that such assaults occurred.

Israeli officials said Hamas terrorists brutalised women throughout their incursion into southern Israel, and complained that UN leaders and others have been slow to condemn sexual assaults.

The UN visit comes after multiple news organisations reported allegations of sexual violence during the Oct 7 attack.

In a Dec 28 article, The New York Times documented a pattern of gender-based violence in the attack and identified at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls appeared to have been sexually assaulted or mutilated.

The UN team “aims to give voice to survivors, witnesses, recently released hostages and those affected; to identify avenues for support, including justice and accountability; and to gather, analyse and verify information”, said a statement issued Jan 24 by the office of Ms Pramila Patten, the UN secretary-general’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, who is leading the visit.

While the Israeli government has welcomed Ms Patten’s team, which arrived on Jan 28 night, it has refused to cooperate with another UN body investigating Oct 7 atrocities, accusing it of anti-Israel bias.

Hamas, which the United States and the European Union consider a terrorist group, denies that Palestinian fighters sexually assaulted women during the attack.

It has described the accusations as “wartime propaganda” meant to “justify the very real crimes of mass murder and ethnic cleansing that Israel is carrying out against our people”, referring to the Israeli military campaign that local officials say has killed more than 26,000 people in the Gaza Strip since Oct 7.

Hamas said in a statement issued by Mr Basem Naim, a member of the group’s political bureau, that the Oct 7 operation was “very short”, and its fighters had time only for their mission “to crush the enemy’s military sites”.

But extensive video footage shows uniformed Hamas gunmen killing unarmed civilians in a day-long attack in which Israeli officials say about 1,400 people were killed or taken hostage.

Hamas has also said its fighters, as Muslims, are “honour-bound to respect and protect all women”, and demanded an apology from the Times.

The Times report has been challenged on social media by critics who question the reliability of witnesses cited in the article.

Some also say it failed to prove that Hamas planned and directed the sexual violence, or that any of the assailants were members of the group, noting that other militants and ordinary residents of Gaza entered Israel that day too.

The Times cited four people who described seeing sexual assaults while hiding during the Hamas-led attack, two of whom have since come under intense scrutiny.

One, a 26-year-old accountant who asked to be identified only by her first name, Ms Sapir, has been presented as a key witness by Israeli police.

At a press briefing on Nov 14, officials showed a three-minute excerpt from a video interview in which she described seeing a woman raped, mutilated and killed.

Some critics have said her comments in the police video clip were inconsistent with what she told the Times.

The Times found Ms Sapir and spoke to her several times before the publication of its article, including for two hours outside a cafe. In these interviews, she recounted an ordeal that began at the rave in southern Israel, where terrorists killed more than 360 people.

She was shot in the back during the attack, she said, and while feeling faint at times and hiding under the branches of a tree, she saw groups of armed men, many dressed in military fatigues, rape and kill at least five women.

She also told the Times she saw assailants carrying the heads of three women.

Israeli police have declined to release more of what Ms Sapir told them, saying that going into greater detail could hinder their investigation.

But police let the Times view portions of another video in which Ms Sapir told investigators much of what she told the Times, describing multiple sexual assaults.

Asked why the Israeli police released only part of Ms Sapir’s testimony, Ms Mirit Ben Mayor, a police chief superintendent and spokesperson, said, “We needed to show the world, which unbelievably didn’t believe us about sexual violence, and on the other hand, we needed to protect the investigation.”

The other witness who has been scrutinised is Mr Raz Cohen, a security consultant who has described seeing a rape at a different location to several news outlets.

Critics have questioned his credibility because he did not say he witnessed such an attack in his very first interviews with reporters, on Oct 9.

In his very first interviews with the media, Mr Cohen described the terror of seeing people being massacred around him and hiding for his life.

Asked this month why he had not mentioned rape at first, Mr Cohen cited the stress of his experience, and said in a text message that he had not realised then that he was one of the few surviving witnesses.

He declined to be interviewed again, saying he was working to recover from the trauma he suffered.

The Times article also described visual evidence and interviews with witnesses, soldiers and volunteer medics who together said they found more than 30 bodies of women and girls with signs of sexual violence or mutilation, including at kibbutzim and military bases struck by heavily armed gunmen wearing combat fatigues.

Israeli police have acknowledged that, during the shock and confusion of Oct 7, they did not conduct autopsies or collect other forensic evidence.

Experts say it is not unusual for such evidence to be minimal in cases of wartime sexual violence.

The UN team led by Ms Patten plans to spend about two weeks in Israel and the occupied West Bank interviewing witnesses and analysing medical and forensic information.

Ms Patten’s office said she will share some initial findings after the mission ends in mid-February, with additional information expected to be included in her office’s annual report on sexual violence in conflict. NYTIMES