I saw ten Hamas terrorists beat and gang-rape an Israeli woman before shooting her dead on October 7 - her face continues to haunt me

A survivor of the October 7 massacre has told of the unfathomable atrocities he witnessed on the dreaded day as Hamas terrorists raped, tortured and killed young, innocent women.

Yoni Saadon, 39, who survived the Supernova peace festival by hiding under dead bodies, now wakes at night in anguish to the faces of the fallen women, including one with 'the face of an angel'.

One image indiscriminately glued to his brain, is the horrifying moment a woman's decapitated head rolled across the road, after she refused to be stripped naked.

As the sun rose on the desert festival and Hamas terrorists stormed in, Yoni took cover under a music stage. But a woman hiding alongside him was identified by terrorists. 

'She fell to the ground, shot in the head, and I pulled her body over me and smeared her blood on me so it would look as if I was dead too,' he told The Sunday Times. 

'I will never forget her face. Every night I wake to it and apologise to her, saying 'I'm sorry'.' 

After an hour, the shift manager peeked out. 'I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or ten of the fighters beating and raping her.'

The woman was screaming 'stop it' he said, and begged the terrorists to kill her to put her out of her misery.

'When they finished they were laughing and the last one shot her in the head', he said.

The father of four admitted how his mind kept reminding him it could of been one of his daughters, or his sister, who at the last minute bowed out of the festival.

The horror was far from over for Yoni as, hiding in the bushes, he saw two more Hamas fighters catch a woman.

'She was fighting back, not allowing them to strip her', he recalled. 'They threw her to the ground and one of the terrorists took a shovel and beheaded her and her head rolled along the ground. 

'I see that head too', he admitted.

Yoni shared his story with The Sunday Times at a support group for the festival survivors in Sitria, southeast of Tel Aviv.

Three times a week survivors from around Israel get together with parents whose children were among those slaughtered. 

Volunteer therapists on hand included Bar Yuval-Shani, 58, who lost her only sister, Deborah, and brother-in-law, Shlomi Matias, both musicians and peace activists, killed on Holit kibbutz by militants who broke into their safe room.

Yoni Saadon's account is one of several witness accounts of rape Yuval-Shani has heard from festival survivors, all of whom, she says, are 'deeply traumatised'. 

Eight weeks after the attack in which 1,200 were killed and 240 taken hostage, there has been mounting evidence of widespread rape on October 7. 

Israeli police have opened up the biggest investigation into sexual violence and crimes against women ever in the nation.

The leader of the investigation Shelly Harush said: 'It's clear now that sexual crimes were part of the planning and the purpose was to terrify and humiliate people.'

Police have collected thousands of statements, photographs and video clips that have been called unbearable to watch from a mother's perspective and include 'girls whose pelvises were broken they had been raped so much'.

According to the people who had to take away the lifeless bodies from the massacre sites, many of the women were left naked with serious signs of bleeding from their genitals.

Haim Outmezgine, commander of a special unit of Zaka, that collects the remains of bodies said: 'We collected 1,000 bodies in ten days from the festival site and kibbutzim. No one saw more than us.

'It was clear they were trying to spread as much horror as they could — to kill, to burn alive, to rape … it seemed their mission was to rape as many as possible.'

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'.