Israel is preventing UN investigators from speaking to witnesses and victims of the October 7 Hamas attack, former UN rights chief Navi Pillay, who is chairing a three-person probe, has said, AFP reports.

The unprecedented open-ended Commission of Inquiry was established by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021 to investigate all alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

“I deplore the fact that people inside Israel who wish to speak to us are being denied that opportunity, because we cannot get access into Israel,” Pillay said. The investigation was briefing diplomats at the UN in Geneva on its progress and said that since October 7, it had focused entirely on the current Gaza conflict.

“So far as the government of Israel is concerned, we have faced not merely a lack of cooperation but active obstruction of our efforts to receive evidence from Israeli witnesses and victims to the events that occurred in southern Israel,” said Chris Sidoti, one of the three members of the inquiry.

Sidoti also said the investigators began collecting digital evidence early on October 7, some of which has since “disappeared from the internet”.