Joe Biden additionally known as for Hamas to launch feminine hostages it’s nonetheless holding in Gaza.

Washington:

US President Joe Biden on Tuesday condemned what he mentioned was sexual violence by Hamas through the October 7 assaults on Israel, which the Palestinian militants deny.

Biden additionally known as for Hamas to launch feminine hostages it’s nonetheless holding in Gaza, saying the group’s refusal to free them had led to the breakdown of a truce with Israel.

“The world cannot simply look away at what is going on on,” Biden mentioned at a marketing campaign occasion in Boston.

“It is on all of us — authorities, worldwide organizations, civil society and companies — to forcefully condemn the sexual violence of Hamas terrorists with out equivocation.”

Campaigners in Israel have derided what they see as a muted worldwide response to gender-based violence through the assault.

Hamas in an announcement Monday rejected accusations of rape and sexual violence as “unfounded lies.”

Biden mentioned there had been experiences that Hamas “used rape to terrorize girls and women” through the assaults final month, wherein Israel says 1,200 folks have been killed.

“Over the previous few weeks, survivors and witnesses of the assaults have shared the horrific accounts of unimaginable cruelty” together with rape, mutilation and the desecration of our bodies, he mentioned.

“Hamas terrorists inflicting as a lot ache and struggling on girls and women as potential after which murdering them — It’s appalling.”

Biden mentioned that Hamas had “refused to let go” plenty of girls aged between 20 and 39 beneath a deal brokered by Qatar between Israel and the Palestinian group.

“These girls and everybody nonetheless being held hostage by Hamas must be returned to their households instantly. We’re not going to cease till we deliver each certainly one of them house and it is going to be a protracted course of,” he mentioned.

A US State Division spokesman mentioned on Monday that Hamas seemingly held again on releasing feminine hostages as a result of it didn’t need the ladies to talk publicly about sexual violence.

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