destruction of maternal and reproductive healthcare facilities.

A report commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council documents alleged violations, including rape, in Gaza and the occupied West Bank since Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war.

It also says the destruction of maternity wards in Gaza and embryos at a fertility clinic could indicate a strategy to prevent births among a particular group - one of the legal definitions of genocide.

Israel said it "categorically rejects the unfounded allegations".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded angrily, calling the Human Rights Council "an antisemitic, rotten, terrorist-supporting and irrelevant body".

Instead of focusing on war crimes committed by Hamas, he said, it was attacking Israel with "false accusations".

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021 to investigate all alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

The three-member commission said its new report was based on testimony from victims and witnesses of sexual and reproductive violence, some of whom spoke during two days of public hearings held in Geneva earlier this week, as well as verified photos and video footage, and information from civil society and women's rights organisations.

The commission's chair Navi Pillay, a South African former UN human rights chief, said the evidence collected "reveals a deplorable increase in sexual and gender-based violence" that she claimed was being employed by Israel against Palestinians "to terrorise them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination".

The report says specific forms of sexual and gender-based violence - such as forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, as well as sexual assault - "comprise part of the Israeli Security Forces' standard operating procedures toward Palestinians".

Other forms of such violence, including rape and violence to the genitals, were "committed either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel's top civilian and military leadership", it alleges.

The report does not provide examples of explicit orders from commanders or senior officials. But it does cite statements from Israeli ministers who defended soldiers who were accused of severely mistreating a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman military base last year. (BBC)