Shari Mendes, a reservist in the Israeli army, told what the experts saw when they identified and prepared for burial the female victims of the October 7 massacre by Hamas, reports The Jerusalem Post.
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Shari Mendes spoke on Monday at an event held at the UN headquarters in New York, organized by Israel's representation at the world organization. The event, "Let Our Voices Be Heard: Sexual and Gender-Based Violence During the October 7 Hamas Terror Attack," aimed to highlight stories of gender-based violence and mutilation by Hamas during the attack, which the international community, including the United Nations , largely swept under the carpet.
"These women came in with their eyes open, their mouths disfigured, their hands clenched into fists," Mendes said at the event, adding that "the anguish was still visible on the faces of the soldiers we dealt with."
"Our team commander saw several female soldiers who were shot in the groin - intimate parts/vagina - or in the breast. A group of victims were systematically mutilated"
Mendes explained.
In a film report played at the event, a survivor said that he saw a terrorist who, after raping a woman, cut off her breast and played with it.
"Our unit saw decapitated or dismembered bodies, mutilated bodies," Mendes continued. “A young woman arrived without legs: they were cut off.
We saw several severed heads, one still had a large kitchen knife in his neck".
“Charred remains arrived, which had to be identified and prepared for burial.
These bodies were burned beyond recognition, often without arms or legs; they did not resemble anything human"
Mendes said.
“Sometimes they fell apart as soon as we touched them. These soldiers were burned alive at very high temperatures."
The female soldier said that the faces of the corpses were often distorted. "The heads and faces were covered in blood. They were shot in the eyes, in the face and in the skull," he explained.
"Families often had no face to show, and mutilation of the faces of these women appears to have been one of the aims of the murders."
Some of them "had their heads smashed in so that their brains poured out," Mendes continued. “Some of them were shot in the head so many times at close range that their heads were almost blown apart.
"In some cases this was done after death, purely out of cruelty"
- the IDF reservist concluded his report.
