More than 10 weeks after the bloody Hamas attack on Israel, accounts of sexual violence are on the rise.

But the scarcity of survivor testimonies and the lack of forensic evidence make it difficult to assess their scale.

"Hamas used rape and sexual violence as weapons of war," Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan said in early December, as Israel accused international bodies of an inadequate response.

In recent weeks, officials have reiterated allegations that the militants who crossed over from the Gaza Strip on 7 October committed violent gang rape, genital mutilation, and engaged in sexual acts with children and corpses.

Witnesses and experts interviewed by Agence France-Presse said a full picture of the atrocities or their systematic nature had still not been established after the chaos of the huge attack, which killed about 1,140 people in Israel, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

In the days after 7 October, hundreds of bodies arrived at the Shura military base in central Israel, some so burnt and disfigured that delicate work was required for examination.

Police spokesperson Mirit Ben Mayor said there have been no forensic reports of sexual violence, while Hamas has rejected the accusations, saying they were intended to "demonize" the group.

"The bodies were not checked for rape; they were checked for identification" before the swift burial Judaism traditionally requires, she said.

AFP spoke to one of the reservists tasked with identifying and washing the bodies of female soldiers after the attack.

Many young women arrived in bloody shrouded rags with just their underwear.

"We were in such a state of shock," said Shari, whose full name is being withheld at the army's request.

"Many young women arrived in bloody shrouded rags with just their underwear, and the underwear was often very bloody.

"Our team commander saw several soldiers who were shot on the crotch, intimate parts, vagina or shot in the breasts," she said.

"It is very difficult to give you exact numbers," Shari said. An architect by trade, she said she was not trained to deal with atrocities on such a scale.

Naked from waist down

Dvora Bauman, a gynecologist in Jerusalem who specializes in helping victims of sexual abuse, said the recognition of sexual violence in Hamas's attack came too late.

Eli Hazen, 56, a volunteer with the Zaka organisation which recovers and identifies bodies in accordance with Jewish tradition, said "we obviously didn't see anything before or during" the events. He described finding the body of a woman shot in the back of the head in Kibbutz Beeri, naked from the waist down.

Hazen said her body was kneeling at the foot of a bed in a position suggesting she had been abused.

In another ruined house in the same kibbutz, the body of a young woman lay beneath the corpse of a militant, neither of them fully dressed, he told AFP.

The bodies were in bad condition, having begun to decay, and it is very difficult to be sure about what happened, Hazen said.                          

WITH AFP