The group has previously accused Hamas and others of committing war crimes.<\/p>\n
War crimes are serious violations of international law against civilians and combatants during armed conflict. Crimes against humanity can occur in peacetime and include torture, rape and discrimination, be it racial, ethnic, cultural, religious or gender-based. They involve \u201ca widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amnesty has also accused Israel of genocide, an accusation<\/a> that Jerusalem vehemently denies. However, Amnesty said any Israeli wrongdoing, or Palestinian groups\u2019 crimes against other Palestinians, were outside the scope of this report.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tGet The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition \t\t\t\tBy signing up, you agree to the terms<\/a><\/p>\n Amnesty said that the mass killing of civilians in Israel on October 7 amounted \u201cto the crime against humanity of extermination.\u201d Among the other crimes listed were murder, imprisonment, torture, enforced disappearance, and sexual violence.<\/p>\n \t Hamas, including its armed wing the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, were \u201cchiefly responsible\u201d for the crimes committed on October 7, Amnesty said. Hamas ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs\u2019 Brigades and \u201cunaffiliated Palestinian civilians,\u201d were responsible to a lesser extent.<\/p>\n Amnesty called on Hamas as the de facto authority of Gaza, as well as Israel and the Palestinian Authority, to investigate and prosecute the offenses.<\/p>\n It noted that PA President Mahmoud Abbas \u201chas called for the release of hostages and condemned the killing of civilians, [but] Amnesty International is not aware of any recognition or condemnation by him or any other leaders of the State of Palestine of the scope and scale of violations.\u201d<\/p>\n The organization said that after the attack, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza \u201ccontinued to commit violations and crimes under international law in their holding and mistreatment of hostages and the withholding of bodies seized.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe holding of hostages was done as part of an explicitly stated plan explained by the leadership of Hamas and of other Palestinian armed groups,\u201d the report determined.<\/p>\n \t During the October 7 onslaught, thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, including the bodies of some 36 people they had killed.<\/p>\n \u201cContrary to claims by Hamas leaders that their fighters only targeted military objectives, the overwhelming majority of those killed were civilians and most of the locations targeted were residential communities or other places in which civilians were gathered, namely two music festivals and a beach,\u201d the group said.<\/p>\n The human rights group determined that Palestinian assailants committed sexual assault during the attack, but said it could not determine the \u201cscope or scale\u201d of the violence or the affiliations of most of the perpetrators.<\/p>\n Additionally, the group said it \u201cfound no evidence that Hamas or other Palestinian armed groups gave orders to their fighters to commit acts of sexual violence during the attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n It noted that the accounts of five freed hostages indicate criminal sexual violence to which they were subjected in captivity, including \u201csexual assault, forced nudity, and\/or forcible shaving of body hair,\u201d and that hostages heard accounts from other captives of sexual violence as well.<\/p>\n Amnesty said it collected evidence indicating that rape likely took place during the assault \u2014 citing one person\u2019s direct testimony as well as media reports and the testimony of therapists \u2014 but said it could not \u201cdefinitively conclude that rape, as opposed to sexual assault more broadly, was committed.\u201d<\/p>\n \t In May 2024, the International Criminal Court applied for arrest warrants for Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas\u2019s armed wing Mohammed Deif, and head of Hamas and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar. The ICC withdrew the applications after the trio were all killed later that year by Israel.<\/p>\n The court also issued a still-active arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024 for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n In December 2024, Amnesty also accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza during the war with Hamas that followed the October 7 attack. It then claimed late last month that Israel was \u201cstill committing genocide,\u201d despite a ceasefire that came into effect on October 10.<\/p>\n When Amnesty made the accusation, Israel\u2019s Foreign Ministry vehemently rejected it as \u201centirely false\u201d and called the report \u201cfabricated\u201d and \u201cbased on lies.\u201d As evidence, Israel has cited efforts made to avoid civilian casualties in the war, including evacuation orders ahead of assaults on terror strongholds in Gaza.<\/p>\n \t The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 70,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7, 2023,\u00a0onslaught.<\/p>\n Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza\u2019s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 476.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\tA reservist, with his gun slung across his back, looks at a house destroyed during Hamas\u2019s invasion of Israel, during a memorial event two years later on October 7, 2025. (Tsafrir Abayov\/FLASH90)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AP25309552720505-e1762410591921-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tGunmen from Hamas and Egyptian workers purport to search for the bodies of hostages in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City, November 5, 2025. (AP Photo\/Jehad Alshrafi)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/F231204JB09-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tDemonstrators gather during a protest decrying sexual violence against women in the October 7 massacre by Hamas, outside of United Nations headquarters in New York City, on December 4, 2023. (Yakov Binyamin\/Flash90)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/AFP__20250927__76Y84RY__v1__HighRes__GermanyPalestinianIsraelConflictDemo-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tParticipants display a banner reading \u2018One genocide does not justify another\u2019 as they gather during a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel demonstration in front of the Red City Hall (Rotes Rathaus) in Berlin on September 27, 2025. (RALF HIRSCHBERGER \/ AFP)<\/p>\n
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