It was just after 6 a.m. on Oct. 7 when the first missiles appeared in the sky, kicking off hours of violence in southern Israel as Hamas militants carried out a terror attack that killed at least 1,200 people.
Rami Shmael —who produced the Supernova music festival, where at least 260 people were massacred on Oct. 7— returned the following day and witnessed its aftermath.
"Outside two cars, there was also two young ladies, naked from the waist down," Shmael said. "One of the victims was gunshot down in the lower part of her body."
Shmael said there was "definitely" a difference between how the bodies of the male and female victims were found.
"What they did to these ladies from the waist down, it's not only rape," Shmael said.
Israeli investigators tell CBS News the priority after the Oct. 7 attack was identifying the victims, so they did not collect evidence of sexual assault. But they say there are eyewitness accounts, photos, interrogation statements and circumstantial evidence pointing to sexual attacks.
A bipartisan group of 33 U.S. senators has written a letter urging the United Nations to launch an independent investigation into allegations of sexual violence committed by Hamas against Israelis. The senators claim that there is a growing body of evidence to support these claims.
CBS News was shown injuries documented by a supervisor from the Israeli search and recovery team. These injuries included lacerations, stabbings, and gunshots to the genital area of female victims.
The bodies were taken to an Israeli army base serving as a morgue, where a volunteer from the Israeli Defense Forces, Shari Mendes, handled the bodies of female victims. Mendes described seeing women who had been shot in the genitals and breasts, and some who arrived at the morgue wearing bloody underwear.
A medic from the Israeli Defense Forces, who chose to remain anonymous, shared what he discovered at one kibbutz. He described finding a woman on the floor with her legs wide open, shot at the back of her head, her pants pulled down, and a pile of semen on her lower back.
In response to these allegations, Hamas issued a statement to CBS News denying the accusations of rape and labeling them as misleading propaganda.
According to U.S. officials, the attack involved not only militant groups but also criminal organizations.
On October 7, Israeli investigators revealed that the majority of the victims of sexual violence did not survive to share their experiences.
Mendes, a prominent figure, expressed his distress over the cases, describing them as messages of intense hatred.
