The death toll is expected to climb today after a 14-storey tower block in Spain was gutted by an uncontrollable inferno, with experts blaming its flammable cladding in a tragedy reminiscent of London’s Grenfell Tower disaster of 2017.

At least four people were confirmed killed last night and a further 19 were missing, feared dead, despite the heroic efforts of firefighters who braved the raging fire to haul trapped residents from their balconies.

The apartment block in Valencia caught fire at around 5.30pm on Thursday, trapping some of the more than 400 residents in the complex in their homes before it continued to rage on into the early hours of Friday morning.

Dramatic footage shows a man jumping several floors onto an inflatable mat to escape the raging fire, while other homeowners were seen awaiting rescue on their terraces as the flames closed in around them.

One couple, seen in footage being hauled to safety by firefighters, were later pictured being taken for treatment by emergency workers, seemingly not too badly hurt. 

Witnesses described how the fire engulfed the entire block ‘like cork’, with the flames spreading ‘in a matter of minutes’ and moving through the main tower and then into an adjoining building, 

Spain’s TVE public television said there were more than 130 flats in the building which was rapidly ‘reduced to a skeleton’.

As the sun rose on Friday, firefighters were preparing to enter the building to begin the grim task of going door-to-door in the search for bodies. Crews were still tackling the blaze, but said it was ‘controlled’.

The apartment block, in the Campanar area of the port city, was covered with highly-flammable polyurethane cladding, which experts have blamed for its rapid destruction. 

The material is legal but no longer widely used after it was linked to the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, with an inquiry into the disaster being told that polyurethane and other combustible materials had been used in the building.

If cladding is to blame in this case, it could be the first fire of its kind in Spain, according to an engineer who previously surveyed the building. 

Firefighters said last night that they do not expect any of the missing to have survived the blaze – the cause of which is currently unclear.

Town hall officials had earlier said 19 people were unaccounted for but the number later rose to 20.

The official death toll is not expected to rise until later today when fire crews and other emergency responders are able to access the inside of the apartment block.

Jorge Suarez, sub-director of emergencies for the regional Valencian government, said last night that 14 people including at least six firefighters had been injured in the blaze.

Confirming fears there would be fatalities, he said: ‘We have to confirm the worst of the hypotheses that were on the table.

‘Four people have died. We can now confirm that but we can’t give out any more information at the moment.

‘Firefighters are still working exclusively outside the building on tasks related to extinguishing the blaze.

‘The characteristics of the building make it impossible to carry out any such work inside the structure so the work being done at the moment is focused on cooling down the outside and that’s going to be the focus over the next few hours.

‘I can’t say at the moment when they’re going to be able to go inside the building.’

Confirming earlier reports firefighters had sighted four bodies after they put up a drone, he added: ‘The information on the four fatalities is based on visual information we have.’ Two of the bodies were seen on a terrace, and the others on a floor.

Authorities confirmed that 14 people had been injured, among them nine men aged between 25 and 57, four women aged between 27 and 81, and a seven-year-old boy.

Twelve of them are understood to remain in hospital, as of midnight last night.

More details began to emerge this morning of the miracle rescue of a couple trapped on the seventh-floor in images that went around the world.

The man and woman were trapped on their seventh-floor balcony for almost two hours before being plucked to safety by firefighters in cherry pickers.

They covered their faces with scarves and woolly hats to protect themselves from the flames, smoke and intense heat.

At one point they were even filmed trying to jump over a partition wall separating their balcony from their neighbour’s terrace before being dissuaded by the fire crews trying to reach them who focused on dousing the outside of their flat with water to try to keep the flames away and make reaching them possible.

The couple were heard shouting for help as their rescuers tried to calm them down and darkness descended on the area.

They were plucked to safety around 8pm, with onlookers fearing a fatal outcome cheering as they were brought to the ground.

They received emergency medical attention following their rescue but are not thought to have needed hospital treatment.

Their whereabouts this morning was unknown. Other survivors are being put up in hotels or staying with family and friends.

Construction began on the building in 2005 and it was completed around 2009, with the construction company boasting at the time that it was built with ‘the highest quality materials’. 

More than 20 fire crews were involved in tackling last night’s blaze, with their efforts being hampered by the wind and soaring temperatures of the fire. 

Witnesses said that firefighters managed to rescue several people, including a father and daughter, teenage boy and a couple, from their balconies.

Speaking to EFE, Esther Puchades, who is deputy head of Valencia’s Industrial Engineers Association (COGITI), blamed the building’s cladding for the fire’s ferocity and said that the tragedy may mark ‘a turning point’ in Spain.

Images recalled the London disaster in June 2017 when a fire ripped through Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey high-rise in the west of the British capital, killing 72 people.

The blaze spread rapidly due to the highly combustible cladding on the block’s outside walls. A public inquiry into the disaster is still ongoing.

Speaking to Valencian TV on Thursday, Puchades explained that when construction began on the now destroyed building, ‘the bad reputation of polyurethane was not so widespread’ as it is now, in the wake of Grenfell and other disasters around the world.

‘Today it is not used, at least not in that way,’ she added, referring to increased safety measures around its usage in Spain.

Engineer David Higuera also told Spanish newspaper El País that the building’s cladding may have been the cause of the rapid spread of the fire. 

The material is ‘very good at insulating against heat and cold, but very combustible,’ he said.

Dozens of residents were pictured watching on in horror tonight as their homes were destroyed in front of their eyes.

A resident who lives on the second floor of the building told TV channel La Sexta that ‘the fire spread in a matter of 10 minutes’ after it broke out.

He speculated that material on the facade of the building may have enabled the flames to move through the building so quickly.

A resident who lives in the building opposite told RNE radio what she saw when the fire broke out. 

‘At first the fire came out of the balconies and parts of the facade fell down,’ she said, adding that wind had blown parts of the cladding off in recent years and that it had needed to be repaired.

Spain’s TVE public television said there were more than 130 flats in the building. 

Television images showed the entire facade of the building ablaze as burning segments fell to the pavement below and small explosions were heard inside. 

A woman who runs a nearby flower shop told public television the building was no more than 14 years old and had more than 100 flats, all of which were occupied.

‘What caused the fire to spread was mostly the wind,’ she said, describing scenes of ‘chaos’ as the blaze took hold, snarling traffic and sending clouds of smoke everywhere.

A field hospital was set up near the scene in case possible victims required treatment. 

 

Local media reported several residents calling for help from the balconies of their apartments. 

Ana Mari Gonzalez, who works in a nearby clinic, told TVE she could see firefighters working to rescue a teenage boy trapped on the building’s first floor. 

‘Please stay away from the area of the fire to let the emergency services do their work,’ Valencia’s mayor Maria Jose Catala wrote on X.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said he was ‘shocked by the terrible fire’ and was in contact with the mayor and the region’s leader ‘to offer whatever help they needed’ and extending his condolences to everyone affected by the blaze.

The Spanish Royal family sent their support to emergency services and added: ‘Our hearts are with the Valencians.’

Hamas terrorists raped and mutilated Israeli civilians, leaving an ‘apocalypse of bodies’ which were missing limbs at the site of the Nova music festival as gunmen swept through southern Israel on October 7, a harrowing new report has claimed.

The report details ‘sadistic’ crimes alleged to have occurred at the festival, in surrounding villages, on IDF bases and in captivity in Gaza.

It describes the violence endured by men and women, some of whom were allegedly killed while they were being brutalised, as others were made to watch the sexual abuse of their friends and family members before being murdered.

The chilling report from the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel was presented to the UN Special Envoy on Sexual Violence in Conflict Areas, who visited Israel earlier this month to hear testimonies of sexual abuse.

An overview of the findings states: ‘Hamas terrorists employed sadistic practices aimed at intensifying the degree of humiliation and terror inherent in sexual violence. ‘Many of the bodies of sexual crime victims were found bound and shackled.

‘The genitals of both women and men were brutally mutilated, and sometimes weapons were inserted into them. The terrorists did not stop at shooting, they also cut and mutilated sexual organs and other body parts with knives.’

The testimonies included claims Hamas gunmen repeatedly stabbed an injured woman while they raped her; that victims had nails, grenades and knives inserted into their sexual organs; and how survivors fleeing the festival witnessed ‘girls whose pelvises were simply broken from being raped so much’.

The report concluded Hamas insurgents operated systematically to target both women and men in villages and kibbutzim during the assault, executing victims during or after instigating sexual abuse.

Orit Sulitzeanu, CEO of ARCCI, claimed partners, family and friends were forced to watch horrific acts performed often in groups to ‘increase the pain and humiliation for all present’.

The ARCCI report, looking at documented cases of abuse on and since October 7, concluded that Hamas’ attack ‘included violent acts of rape, accompanied by threats with weapons, and in some cases targeted towards injured women’.

The authors noted that rape was ‘often’ perpetrated in front of an audience, including partners, families or friends, in order to ‘increase the pain and humiliation of all present’.

Young men and women fleeing the Nova festival were ‘hunted’ and dragged by their hair, screaming, according to witness testimonies. In most cases, they were killed after or during their rape.

One survivor of the Nova festival said the aftermath was an ‘apocalypse of bodies, girls without clothes, some missing their upper, some their lower parts’.

The mutilation of bodies has been documented before. The report made reference to the story of a woman at the festival whose breast was cut off with a box cutter before her assailants threw it on the floor ‘and passed it between them like a toy’.

Another described fleeing the site and seeing a woman lying on her stomach near the road without pants or underwear, her legs apart. Her genitalia was described as looking ‘as if someone tore her apart’.

Another survivor said they saw women tied to trees, mutilated with ‘all their organs cut, damaged’ and ‘iron rods inserted into their sexual organs’.

Yoni Saadon, a survivor who witnessed the rape of a young woman enduring severe violence, recounted a victim crying out: ‘Stop it – already I’m going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!’

The witness said ‘when they finished they were laughing and the last one shot her in the head’.

One witness said she saw a young woman with a back injury, her trousers pulled down below her knees, being raped by one terrorist as another ‘pulled from her hair’.

‘Each time the woman resisted, the terrorist stabbed her in the back.’

In another case, she said she saw how while one terrorist was raping a woman, another cut into her and mutilated her body. 

Raz Cohen and Shoham Gueta, survivors who hid from Hamas at the festival, said they saw terrorists raping a young woman as they stabbed her repeatedly, ‘literally butchering her’. 

Multiple witnesses reported seeing men who had been shot in the genitalia, or had sexual organs ‘cut off’.

A paramedic attending the scene said: ‘There were a lot of gun wounds there. Shooting was targeted at sexual organs. We saw that a lot. They had a thing with sexual organs’.

ARCCI also reported how family members, partners and friends in raided homes were forced to watch sexual abuse before their murders.

The positions bodies were found in indicated some had been made to watch the abuse and murder of their partners, the report suggested.

The authors said there was a ‘pattern’ that ’emerged clearly’ in testimonies.

In one case, a mother’s body was found by search and rescue teams, her hands tied behind her back with signs of struggle.

The body of her daughter, a girl or young woman, was found in the next room with her pants and underwear rolled down.

An IDF paramedic recovered the bodies of two girls from another building, one found sexually abused with a knife in her genitals. They said one of the girls was found with the remains of semen on her back.

ARCCI is the umbrella group for the nine regional Rape Crisis Centers of Israel, and serves as the only organisation in the country whose main aim is to combat sexual violence. The group is funded by donations.

The group ordinarily provides services and support for individual victims of sexual violence while working to raise awareness more generally in local communities.

It also works closely with the professional bodies that deal with sexual violence, including the State’s Attorney, the Israel Police, the Department of Justice, and the Police Investigations Department.

In its report, it said it had drawn on official sources, publications in local and international press, interviews with first responders, and information from professionals and confidential calls to ARCCI.

Information from social networks of ‘unverified sources’ was not included, the report noted. 

Alleged sexual assaults have been reported by several eye-witnesses and first-responders of the October 7 attacks.

In kibbutzim, women and girls were first alleged to have been attacked by Hamas gunmen during their assault.

In one case it was reported a knife had been hidden in the genitals of a victim.

Soldiers on IDF bases were also reported victims of sexual violence, as well as hostages returning from captivity.

In December, images shown to the New York Times showed what Israeli authorities said was a woman who had dozens of nails driven into her thighs and genitals in a savage example of mutilation.

Other clips displayed the corpses of soldiers and civilians alike who had been either shot or stabbed in the groin.

Another dark image dubbed ‘the woman in the black dress’ showed the corpse of an Israeli later identified as Gal Abdush. 

She is seen splayed on the floor, legs wrenched apart with her vagina exposed, and covered in burns. Her lifeless body was crumpled in the dirt next to the husk of a heavily damaged car riddled with bullet holes. 

Earlier that month, as hostages returned from captivity in Gaza, it was reported at least ten male and female hostages held by Hamas had been sexually abused before being freed.

A medic claimed men and women had been physically abused while held hostage, after treating some of the 110 released as part of a week-long truce in late November.

‘They touch girls, and everyone knows it,’ one hostage later told local media. ‘I won’t recount details, but we had a procedure that no one moves without someone guarding them.’

Yelena Trufanov, a Russian citizen released separately in a nod to Vladimir Putin, described her fears as Israeli airstrikes rained down on the besieged enclave. ‘You have no idea what you’re doing there… and I know the conditions they’re holding the men in are worse, worse than for the women.’ 

In November, Israeli police said they were investigating ‘several cases’ of alleged sexual violence against women by Hamas, citing ‘multiple witnesses’ to incidents of rape.

Police said they had been gathering evidence about allegations of sexual violence from witnesses, surveillance footage and the interrogations of Palestinians arrested since Hamas’ incursion into Israel last month.

Police also shared testimony from a survivor of the attack at the Supernova music festival, who described seeing a woman gang-raped before being shot.

Haaretz reports the witness told officers of how she watched the shocking attack unfold as she hid from Hamas gunmen wearing military uniforms.

‘As I am hiding, I see in the corner of my eye that [a terrorist] is raping her,’ the witness told investigators. ‘They bent her over and I realised they were raping her and simply passing her on to the next [gunman].’

The witness said the victim was ‘alive’ and ‘on her feet and bleeding from her back. But then the situation was that he was pulling her hair. She had long, brown hair.’

The woman told officers one of the Hamas gunmen ‘shot her in the head while he was raping her… didn’t even lift his pants’.

Her testimony was one of thousands of pieces of evidence gathered by the police.

Another male witness said he didn’t see the rape itself, but confirmed the other witness told him at the time what she had seen.

David Katz, head of the Lahav 443 criminal investigation unit, said: ‘We have no living victims who said “we have been raped”‘, but, he said, ‘we have multiple witnesses for several cases’.

While he did not give a precise figure for the number of cases under investigation, Katz said the inquiry could take ‘six to eight months’.

Katz also outlined details of other evidence collected by police, including from the ZAKA organisation, which recovers human remains in accordance with Jewish religious law to afford them a proper burial.

‘We have several statements from people from ZAKA who saw the bodies of women without pants or underwear,’ he said.

‘We took more than 1,000 statements and some of the victims cannot speak due to being in psychological and medical treatment,’ he said.

By Brett Lackey for Daily Mail Australia

Published: 06:36 EST, February 17, 2024 | Updated: 06:51 EST, February 17, 2024

A young woman living out of her car documented overnight conditions in subzero temperatures on a wintry night in Idaho, with both windchill and avalanche warnings in effect.

Rosa, originally from Philadelphia, has been on the road since 2017 and will celebrate the six-year anniversary of getting into her car in September 2023.

Last January, she ended up in Idaho in search of local hot springs, and faced a night in her car with temperatures as low as -33 F.

While sitting in her car, she captured the horrifying experience on camera and shared it on YouTube.

After running errands, Rosa prepared to spend the night and park her car a little higher due to the threat of an avalanche.

For dinner, she heated up a can of chili over an open fire in the back of her car, then gobbled it down with tortilla chips.

'I know the minimum tonight is around -25, but because of the wind chill they say it could be -40. But I'm in my car, so the wind chill shouldn't affect me. But if I tried to cook outside, it would certainly work!' she reasoned.

Then she wrapped herself up, stuffed a sleeping bag into a second sleeping bag, and covered herself with a huge blanket.

“Another thing I do when it gets really cold, especially below zero, throughout the night, I wake up throughout the night, turn on my car and let it warm up so everything doesn't get too hot. have a chance of freezing… just because it can be really hard on your engine and the fluids and everything when it's that cold,” she explained.

“So I'll wake up in a few hours to turn on my car and see if everything's okay. But in the meantime I'm going to bed. Good night!'

At 2:30 a.m., Rosa woke up for the first time to turn on her car and noticed that the dashboard registered an outside temperature of -26 F.

At 6 a.m. she woke up again – this time the outside temperature was a nippy -33 F.

“Oh my god, what the heck,” she exclaimed.

At dawn, Rosa officially woke up and immediately noticed that “everything” in her car was frozen.

“I need to thaw my contact lenses,” she realized, holding her contact case in her hands, the liquid inside frozen.

Her leftover Starbucks coffee had also turned into a block of ice.

“So much for saving my coffee for today!” she said, chuckling.

Despite the frigid temperatures, Rosa was still determined to reach the nearby hot springs.

But shortly after she got there, she quickly realized, “I guess I'm coming to the conclusion that it's just a little too cold for these hot springs.”

“The thing is, I'm not worried about getting in; the hot springs are clearly hot enough; I'm afraid I have to get out,” she explained.

“Breathing hurts a little,” she admitted as she walked back to her car.

She ended up driving two hours away to another one, and enjoyed an afternoon in a naturally heated outdoor hot tub, surrounded by ice and snow in the Idaho wilderness.

“When it comes to snow and winter, I think it takes some getting used to changing your plans,” she said. “And that's the fun of it, right?”

• The horrors unfolded on Saturday on the banks of the Tapajós River in Brazil
• WARNING: This article contains graphic images

By Elena Salvoni

Published: 08:31 EST, February 12, 2024 | Updated: 09:06 EST, February 12, 2024

• Erika de Lima was reportedly murdered by her husband in São Paulo on Sunday
• Surveillance video showed Erika trying to drag Thiago out of a car
• The officer fired a shot that almost hit his wife’s face, then hit her with the gun before shooting her twice in the chest, video footage

By Adry Torres for Dailymail.com

Published: 5:44 PM EST, December 5, 2023 | Updated: 1:30 PM EST, December 6, 2023

Horrified witnesses to Hamas’s October 7 massacre have been left suicidal, with at least one person already taking their own life, it has been reported.

It comes amid the release of testimonies given by those who saw the terror attack first hand – or were among the first at the scene in the days that followed.

Survivors and witnesses to October 7 have said Israeli women were raped – whether they were alive or dead – and tortured in unimaginably cruel ways.

One man who hid in a pit during the attack on the Nova music festival said he heard someone nearby screaming as she was raped, while a combat paramedic said they saw the body of a young woman with her legs open and pants pulled down.

A volunteer tasked with finding and collecting bodies also said in written witness testimony that he found women in their homes tied to the bed. One had been tortured, ‘a knife stuck in her vagina and all her internal organs removed’, he wrote.

The accounts and first assessments by Israeli rights groups suggest sexual assault was part of an atrocities-filled rampage by Hamas and other Gaza militants who killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took more than 240 hostages.

With Israel calling on the international community to recognise the massacre as a crime against humanity, one investigator said Hamas stormed across Israel’s border with Gaza with a ‘clear order’ – to use ‘rape as genocide’.

One horrific video testimony came from a woman who was at the music festival, and was shown privately to journalists by Israeli police, according to the BBC.

In it, the woman – named only as Witness S – describes seeing Hamas fighters rape a woman and mutilate her, before the last of her attackers shot her in the head. 

The gunmen then continued to rape her after she was executed, the witness said.

During the assault, Witness S told police that the attackers cut off parts of the victim’s body, such as her breast, and ‘threw it on the street.’

The woman in the video described watching the terrorists as she pretended to be dead. ‘I couldn’t understand what I saw,’ she said.

Her testimony was released last month, and was presented by Israel’s police chief.

Another man, who was also at the festival site on October 7, said he heard a woman scream as she was raped by Hamas terrorists.

Ron Freger fled the music festival when Hamas attacked and said he heard a woman screaming for help. ‘I was lying in a pit (and) I heard (a girl) yelling: ‘They’re raping me, they’re raping me!’ he told the Associated Press.

Several minutes later, he heard gunshots close by and she fell silent, he said. 

‘The feeling in that moment is one of complete powerlessness. I’m lying in this hole and I have no ability to do anything. I have no weapon, I have nothing, I’m surrounded by other people who are hiding with me and we’re completely powerless,’ said the 23-year-old from the northern Israeli town of Netanya.

The BBC also spoke to a man who said he heard the ‘noises and screams of people being murdered, raped, decapitated.’

In a statement released through a support organisation, he said: ‘Some women were raped before they were dead, some raped while injured, and some were already dead when the terrorists raped their lifeless bodies.

‘I desperately wanted to help, but there was nothing I could do.’ 

In further testimony, a combat medic told the Associated Press that he came across half a dozen bodies of women and men with possible signs of sexual assault when he reached one of the attacked communities.

One girl had been shot in the head and was lying on the floor, her legs open and pants pulled down, with what looked like semen on her lower back, said the medic who spoke on condition of anonymity because his unit was classified. 

Other bodies had bleeding around the groin with limbs at distorted angles, he said.

He was among a number of responders to detail what they saw in the aftermath of the attack. Their accounts make up much of the evidence of sexual assault.

At the Shura military base where victims are being identified, Shari Mendes, a member of the army reserve unit that deals with the identification and religious burial preparation of female soldiers, said some of the women’s bodies came in with little clothing, such as parts of their pyjamas. 

Some only had bloodied underwear.

The soldier also spoke at a UN event in New York on Monday, titled: ‘Hear Our Voices: Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in the October 7 Hamas terror attack’.

She said: ‘Our team commander saw several female soldiers who were shot in the crotch, intimate parts, vagina, or shot in the breast.

‘This seemed to be a systematic genital mutilation of a group of victims.’

‘These women arrived with their eyes opened, their mouths in grimaces, their fists clenched,’ she added.

‘The soldiers that we dealt with had expressions of agony on their faces still.

‘I remember one young woman whose arm was broken in so many places it was difficult for us to lay her arm in the burial shroud, her leg too. In her case the entire left side of her body was shredded, torn apart, most likely by a grenade.’

One of the people tasked with collecting bodies with the Zaka religious volunteer organisations told the BBC that they saw signs of torture and mutilation.

He said such signs included a pregnant woman whose womb had been ripped open before she was killed, and the unborn fetus stabbed.

The BBC said it had been unable to verify the Zaka volunteer’s account, and pointed out that Israeli media reports have questioned some of the testimony of volunteers who worked in the aftermath of the attack.

Another, Nachman Dyksztejna, provided written testimony detailing how he saw the bodies of two women in kibbutz Be’eri with their hands and legs tied to the bed.

‘One was sexually terrorised with a knife stuck in her vagina and all her internal organs removed,’ his statement says, according to the BBC.

Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a legal expert at the Davis Institute of International Relations at Hebrew University, told the British broadcaster that it looked as if Hamas had learned how to ‘weaponize women’s bodies from ISIS’.

‘It brings me chills just to know the details that they knew about what to do to women: cut their organs, mutilate their genitals, rape,’ she said.

‘It’s horrifying to know this.’

A civil commission headed by Dr Elkayam-Levy, which has been tasked with collecting evidence and testimony of sexual crimes, is calling on the international community to recognise the October 7 attacks as being systematic abuse, constituting Crimes Against Humanity.

‘We see definite patterns,’ she told the BBC in an interview. ‘So it wasn’t incidental, it wasn’t random. They came with a clear order. It was […] rape as genocide.’

Minister May Golan said she had spoken to at least three girls who were hospitalised, and in a ‘very hard psychiatric situation because of the rapes they watched.’

She told the BBC that the girls pretended to be dead, but that they ‘watched it, and heard everything. And they can’t deal with it.’

Israel’s police chief Yaacov Shabtai echoed her comments, saying many survivors of the attacks were finding it difficult to come to terms with what they had seen.

Some are understood to be suicidal. One person working with the teams supporting the survivors told the BBC some had already killed themselves.

While the number of witness testimonies appear to be growing in number, police are still struggling to put together the pieces of evidence.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, priority was given to identifying bodies and not preserving evidence, making the investigation more challenging.

Now Israeli police say they are combing through 60,000 videos seized from the body cameras of Hamas gunmen. Footage from social media and security cameras will also be looked at in a bid to bring the perpetrators to justice. 

While it has been hard to find rape survivors, as many were killed by their attackers, Police say they now have ‘multiple’ eye-witness accounts of sexual assault.

They have not said exactly how many, and are yet to interview any of the surviving victims of the attacks.

Israel’s Women’s Empowerment Minister May Golan told the BBC that very few victims of rape or sexual assault had survived the attacks. 

Those that did are undergoing psychiatric treatment.

‘But very, very few (survived). The majority were brutally murdered,’ she said. 

‘They aren’t able to talk – not with me, and not to anyone from the government [or] from the media.’

One expert has said that a country like Israel should have the means to do rigorous testing to confirm if people were sexually assaulted in a more systematic way.

‘Forensic testing should have been a priority to build a full picture of the attack,’ said Nidhi Kapur, a specialist on sexual abuse in situations of armed conflict who has worked in the region. 

‘In a conflict you first take care of the survivors, you don’t count bodies.’

But even two months on from the attack, the exact number of victims remains difficult to establish, partly because of the state of many of the bodies.

A serving soldier, who only used her first name Avigayil, told the BBC: ‘I’ve dealt with more than a few burned bodies and I have no idea what they went through beforehand.

‘And bodies that are missing the bottom half – I also don’t know if they were raped. But women that were clearly raped? There are enough. More than enough.’

Based on open-source information and interviews, the Physicians for Human Rights Israel report documents incidents at the music festival, homes around the Gaza Strip and an Israeli military base, all attacked by Hamas.

‘It is becoming more apparent that the violence perpetrated against women, men and children also included widespread sexual and gender-based crimes,’ it says.

Before this war, Hamas, an Islamic terror group sworn to Israel’s destruction, wasn’t known to use rape as a weapon, said Colin P. Clarke, director of research at The Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consulting firm. 

Its tactics included suicide bombings and shootings of Israeli soldiers and civilians.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his war cabinet held a tense and emotional meeting with recently released hostages and family members of hostages still held in Gaza.

Some of the recently released hostages shared testimonies of sexual abuse during their time in Gaza, participants said.

Separately, a doctor who treated some of the 110 released hostages told the AP that at least 10 men and women among those freed were sexually assaulted or abused, but did not provide further details. 

He spoke on condition of anonymity to protect the hostages’ identities.

According to the Israeli military, 138 hostages, including 15 women, are still held by Hamas and other terror or militant groups in Gaza.

Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, a military spokesman, said the army is ‘absolutely’ concerned about sexual violence against female hostages.    

On Monday, Israel hosted a special event at the United Nations, where former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and top technology executive Sheryl Sandberg were among those who criticised what they called a global failure to support women who were sexually assaulted and killed.

But some groups say Israel isn’t making it easy to investigate.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said it requested access to Israel and the Palestinian territories to allow it to collect information from the events that took place on Oct. 7 and 8, and since then.

However, Israel has not responded to its requests, said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office. Israel says the office has preexisting biases against Israel and it will not cooperate with the body. 

Israeli officials said they would consider all options for independent international mechanisms to investigate.

Rights experts say the United Nations is best placed to conduct a fair, credible and impartial investigation.

‘These accounts are horrifying and deserve an urgent, thorough, and credible investigation,’ said Heather Barr, associate director for the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch.

A retired American lawyer and university professor was caught on camera Tuesday shooting dead two climate change protesters in Panama.

Kenneth Darlington, 77, appeared in court in the town of La Espiga on Wednesday afternoon and was remanded in custody after a two-hour hearing.

Eliécer Plicett, a lawyer for the two victims, both teachers, said Darlington was charged with murder and illegal possession of a weapon. TVN notices reported.

Darlington was seen Tuesday in front of a large number of photographers and television crews as he walked toward a roadblock on a section of the Pan-American Highway in the Chame district, about 90 kilometers west of the capital Panama City.

Darlington allegedly told other passengers in the car as he got out: “This ends today.”

The Panamanian-born US citizen, who according to local media has a previous conviction for illegal firearms possession, is seen arguing with the protesters.

He pulls a gun from his pocket and then, still arguing, starts clearing the barricade on the highway. One of the protesters can be heard saying, “Why don’t you shoot?”

Darlington is seen then opens fire

The first victim immediately fell to the ground. A second can be seen holding his shoulder and grimacing in pain.

One of the victims, Abdiel Díaz, died at the scene The times.

The other, Iván Rodríguez, 62, was taken to the Juan Vega Méndez Clinic in the nearby city of San Carlos, but was dead on arrival at the hospital.

Images shared on social media showed Darlington being handcuffed and taken away by police.

Panama’s President Laurentino Cortizo offered his condolences to the families of the dead protesters and said such a crime “has no place” in his country.

Local media reported that Darlington, a native of Panama’s Colon province, was trying to drive back inland after several errands in the town of La Chorrera when he encountered the roadblock.

He walked to the barricade and asked where the leaders of the protest were, and was told that no leaders were present, according to TVN.

“I don’t want to talk to women,” he reportedly said. “I want to speak to the men.”

According to the complaint, a handful of men approached Darlington, and Darlington then opened fire. He shot three men, TVN reported, and the third is still in hospital.

He was reportedly overheard saying, “That ends that problem.”

Darlington then begins clearing the roadblock and returns to his car.

One person in the car asked him, according to the complaint obtained by TVN, “Do you know what you just did?”

Darlington reportedly replies, “Yes, I killed one and shot another.”

He got into the car and said to his colleagues, “Let’s go.”

Darlington’s girlfriend told him, “We’re not leaving” — and then called the police, TVN said.

Darlington is scheduled to appear in court in Panama City on November 15.

The deaths come as street protests by thousands of Panamanians in recent weeks over a new mining contract with Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals have led to broader discontent with the government.

According to the Panamanian Association of Business Leaders, roadblocks set up by protesters have caused up to $80 million in daily losses for businesses, with schools across the country closed for more than a week and more than 150,000 medical appointments missed.

Officials have urged people to end the protests, although construction worker and teacher unions have vowed to continue taking to the streets until the First Quantum contract is annulled.

The new contract, agreed on October 20, was signed by the Panamanian government and gives First Quantum a twenty-year mining right with an option to extend for another twenty years, in exchange for $375 million in annual revenue for Panama.

Although the government has said the new contract offers better terms than the previous one, protesters disagree.

A female hockey student has suffered horrific facial injuries after being hit by a shot from a male opponent.

Footage of the horror crash saw the woman collapse and scream in pain after the ball hit her face, with the male player’s participation causing a kickback despite being allowed under Massachusetts law.

The incident occurred Thursday between two varsity teams at Swampscott High School and Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School, with the former coming out on top thanks to two goals from the male player.

In an email after the incident, Dighton-Rehoboth Superintendent Bill Runey told alarmed parents that their student’s injury “dramatically increases the concerns of many about player safety.”

Many viewers of the footage have reacted angrily to the male player’s presence on the pitch, due to the unfair physical advantage he has after going through puberty.

In the footage, a female Dighton-Rehoboth player passed the ball to their male teammate, who controlled the ball before unleashing a vicious shot.

The ball immediately hit an opponent in the face, leaving her with horrific facial injuries, including the loss of two teeth, which sent her to hospital. Her condition is unclear.

Shocked teammates were seen resting their hands on their knees and comforting each other after witnessing the horrific injury.

Despite the harrowing scenes, the male player’s place on the team was defended by Swampscott Public Schools Athletic Director Kelly Wolff, who said he has “the exact same right to participate as any player on the team.”

Wolff identified the player, who is not believed to be transgender, as a four-year varsity player and a co-captain of the team, according to WCVB.

The athletic director’s position that he can compete is correct under Massachusetts law, which has no restrictions whatsoever preventing a male athlete from competing in female sports.

Amid the backlash, the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) released a statement to explain the legal basis that allows men and women to play sports on opposite-sex teams.

“The Massachusetts General Law was originally enacted to protect students from discrimination on the basis of sex, and was later expanded to protect students on the basis of gender identification,” the MIAA statement said.

“As a result of this law, and in accordance with the interpretive guidance provided by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, athletic opportunities must be provided to students consistent with their identified gender, and not necessarily their birth-assigned gender. ‘

In response, Runey said the law is clear but ignores the potential for reduced player safety by allowing male players to compete against women.

“For any male athlete participating in a women’s sport, there are no restrictions,” he said.

“So I’m looking for the MIAA to facilitate some conversations to find some middle ground in terms of player safety.”

He continued, “While speaking with a MIAA representative this morning, she mentioned that the MIAA handbook contains a legal note explaining how the Massachusetts Equal Rights Amendment makes male participation on female teams legal.”

The superintendent said he decided to speak out after “seeing and coaching the horror in the eyes of our players as they greeted their bus last night,” which he said is “evidence that there needs to be a renewed approach by the MIAA come to protect the safety of our athletes.’

Runey cited previous rules surrounding girls’ volleyball to determine how to handle the situation, with male players allowed to participate but not allowed to play on the front line “because their ability to spike the ball posed a higher risk.”

These conditions were deemed illegal and are no longer in effect, Runey added.

The grieving sister of a young musician who died in a horror car crash earlier this year has told of the harrowing moment she heard about the accident on Facebook.

Isobel Vlahiotis lost her ‘incredible’ and selfless sister, Odetta Maxwell, 25, in a horror accident along Port Wakefield Highway, just north of Adelaide, on January 31, 2023.

It is understood Ms Maxwell had attempted to change lanes but overcorrected and slid off the road, her car ending up in the undergrowth of the highway’s central reservation.

She managed to climb out of the car before emergency services arrived, but suffered serious internal injuries in hospital that killed her.

Ms Vlahiotis has since urged motorists to be more careful on the roads.

Ms Vlahiotis was casually scrolling through her phone that day when she saw that a car similar to her sister’s, a silver Mazda, had been involved in a serious accident.

She had sent a screenshot of a news article about the accident to her family, but admits she thought: ‘Thousands of people are driving on that road, that can’t be true’.

Soon after, Ms. Vlahiotis called her mother, but she was met with more confusion than answers.

“When I asked if everyone was there, she said yes – she must have thought I meant Dad,” she said 7news.com.au.

“I heard the TV on in the background and thought it was Odetta and Dad talking.”

Ms. Vlahiotis recalled feeling immediate relief and believing her sister, whom she considered more like twins with only 18 months between them, was safe.

However, that comfort was taken away an hour later when she discovered ten missed calls from her mother and another call from her husband.

He told her that Mrs. Maxwell had been in an accident and was in hospital.

Before the crash, Ms. Maxwell was a talented emerging musician who became popular on triple j Unearthed under the stage name Pink Wasabi.

She had also recently enrolled in college to study neuroscience and philosophy and was planning to move in with her girlfriend.

When Ms Vlahiotis arrived at the hospital and was waiting for her parents, doctors frantically tried to resuscitate Ms Maxwell.

There, Ms. Vlahiotis heard from a news bulletin on the emergency room TV how serious her sister’s crash was.

“Before I was told what had happened, it was showing on TV that the girl who crashed was in critical condition and fighting for life,” she said.

“I know the hospital staff didn’t want to break news without mom or dad there.”

In a cruel twist for the family, both their parents were involved in serious car accidents before Ms Maxwell and Ms Vlahiotis were born.

Their mother was hit by a car while sitting in a crosswalk at the age of eight, and their father was involved in a single-vehicle accident after suffering a mental illness in 1991.

Both parents had other disabilities due to the incidents and Ms Maxwell had worked as a part-time carer.

When Ms. Vlahiotis was finally able to go in to visit her sister in intensive care who was on a ventilator, she was shocked to see that her sister did not look fatally injured.

‘She was just there, no scratches except one on her arm. She looked good,” she said.

After months of trying to come to terms with the death of her little sister, Ms. Vlahiotis wants to borrow some of Ms. Maxwell’s passion and determination to keep others safe on the road.

“If there’s any way I can keep her alive, it’s by keeping other people alive,” she said.

‘Make the right choice when you’re behind the wheel.

“If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for your family. If you don’t want to do it for your family, do it for Odetta.’