A woman holds a flag of Israel and a portrait of 13-year-old Alma, held hostage in Gaza since the October 7 attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel, during a protest asking for the release of Israeli hostages in Tel Aviv on November 25, 2023. (Photo by GIL COHEN-MAGEN / AFP)
The European Union (EU) on Friday imposed sanctions on the armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad for “widespread” sexual violence during the October 7 attacks on Israel.
The bloc said fighters from the two Palestinian groups — already on the EU’s terrorism blacklist — “committed widespread sexual and gender-based violence in a systematic manner, using it as a weapon of war”.
The decision to impose the sanctions was part of an agreement among EU states that will now see the bloc blacklist violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
Hamas’s unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures, and unleashed the war in Gaza.
The EU said that the abuses by Hamas fighters included “the rape and subsequent murder of female minors, mutilation of corpses as well as genital mutilation”.
It also accused the assailants of the “targeted abduction of women and girls”.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 33,634 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry. The ministry’s updated toll on Friday included at least 89 deaths over the previous day.
