An official United Nations report published on Tuesday details how Hamas terrorists and domestic police forces in the Gaza Strip subjected dozens of locals to public executions, severe beatings, and physical mutilation during the conflict with Israel, classifying the actions as war crimes, reports The Associated Press.
The findings, compiled by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, cataloged hundreds of instances of extrajudicial enforcement across the territory. The report noted that these acts were frequently recorded and broadcast to intentionally terrify the local population.
“These cases involved executions, kneecapping, bone-breaking with metal pipes or cement bricks and beatings and were framed by the perpetrators as punishments for alleged collaboration with Israel, looting humanitarian aid, theft, drug-related offenses or affiliations with internal rivals,” it said.
According to the commission’s data, Hamas-tied police and armed factions were directly tied to roughly 25% of the 249 documented incidents – which encompassed 108 fatalities – occurring between August 2024 and January 2026. While the investigative team focused heavily on actions linked to Hamas forces, it also monitored violations connected to other local groups.
Hamas spokespeople did not provide statements regarding the document’s assertions.
Hamas has maintained administrative control over Gaza for nearly twenty years after violently ousting the Palestinian Authority. Following an October truce that paused over two years of high-intensity warfare with Israel, the group has systematically re-established its administrative authority across the regions of Gaza it currently oversees.
Tuesday’s findings emphasized that these violent penalties bypassed traditional judicial structures and tribunals entirely, being carried out directly by police squads and Hamas’ wing terrorists.
Srinivasan Muralidhar, who serves as the head of the UN commission, observed that the recorded atrocities took place within an “environment engineered by Israel,” where “Hamas-affiliated forces have exploited the vacuum created by relentless Israeli attacks and widespread destruction.”
The victims of these targeted crackdowns included anti-Hamas dissidents, as well as factions and Israel-backed tribal networks that formed in geographic pockets where Hamas’ authority faltered during the conflict.
The UN brief highlights multiple captured video recordings of capital punishments, such as a September 2025 event where a crowd watched masked men shoot three blindfolded individuals outside Shifa Hospital. It further outlines a separate mass killing the following month, in which eight men were marched into a public plaza in Gaza City and shot. The report states that both groups faced allegations of being traitors, spies, and collaborators.
Hamas regularly carries out executions in the Gaza Strip. Most of the group’s executions have been of alleged “Israeli spies”.
In September of 2022, Hamas authorities executed two Palestinian Arabs who were convicted of assisting Israel by giving it information that resulted in the deaths of two people.
In July of 2025, Hamas’s internal security “deterrence” unit announced it carried out a series of “high-quality” operations, during which 12 individuals were executed for alleged collaboration with Israel and involvement in criminal activity.
Two months earlier, Hamas executed four individuals for their alleged involvement in looting aid trucks entering Gaza.
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