An investigation by the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant gathered accounts from international medical professionals who volunteered in Gaza’s shattered hospitals and clinics over the past two years. Seventeen doctors and a nurse from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States told reporters they repeatedly treated Palestinian children with single gunshot wounds to the head or chest—injuries they say reflect a consistent pattern rather than battlefield chaos. Fifteen of the 17 doctors described treating 114 children under the age of 15 who presented with a single bullet wound to those vital areas. Former Royal Netherlands Army Commander Lt. Gen. Mart de Kruif, asked to assess the pattern, said the concentration of wounds left little doubt about intent. “Just think about how small the head is compared to the rest of the body,” he said. “If you’re seeing a high number of gunshot wounds to the chest area and the head, that’s not collateral damage—that’s deliberate targeting.”
The cases were recorded across six hospitals and four clinics since October 2023, including Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, al-Aqsa Martyrs Government Hospital in Deir al-Balah, the European Hospital, and Al-Shifa. The testimonies include the story of Mira, a four-year-old brought to Nasser Hospital with a gunshot wound to the head. “They said she’d been shot by a quadcopter [drone] while walking around in the humanitarian zone declared by Israel,” said U.S. emergency physician Dr. Mimi Syed. “I was told to just let her die by my colleagues. The assessment was, unfortunately, that there wasn’t much we could do. But she was still moving a little bit. She was very young. A little girl. I just couldn’t look away. There was something in her face that struck me. So I took a chance.” With colleagues, Syed managed to save the child. After seeing so many similar injuries, Syed explained why she began photographing cases: “I have to document this. I realized—these are war crimes.” She documented 18 children with single-shot wounds to the head or chest.
California trauma surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidhwa described how quickly the pattern confronted him upon arriving at the European Hospital in March 2024. “I thought: What the hell?” he said. “How is it possible that, in this small hospital, four children are lying here with gunshot wounds to the head—all admitted within the past 48 hours?” Over the following 13 days, Sidhwa saw nine more children with the same profile of injuries. He began to consider the specific mechanisms likely responsible. “I started to wonder if my hospital was near some crazy sniper,” he said. “Or a drone team killing children just for fun.”
The doctors’ accounts align with previous outside investigations. In July, the BBC reviewed more than 160 cases of Palestinian children shot by soldiers in Gaza and found that in 95 cases the child was shot in the head or chest. According to the BBC’s summary, “Some of the cases we looked at like children were allegedly shot while fleeing battle zones, but many others were shot while playing outside their tents in humanitarian zones and some in areas the IDF themselves had marked as evacuation corridors,” BBC noted. Israeli officials deny that troops deliberately target children and have at times suggested militants were responsible, but the doctors’ testimonies are reinforced by statements from soldiers and whistleblowers describing orders to open fire on civilians, including children, in designated “kill zones” and at aid distribution centers. One Israeli officer was quoted earlier this year saying, “We’re killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs,” while videos and posts circulated of soldiers bragging about hunting for “babies” and shooting a 12-year-old girl. Another soldier boasted, “I just went to Gaza, and there were two little girls playing football. So, what did I do? I took my weapon and shot them in the head.”
The medical professionals also characterized the environment in which they worked: mass-casualty surges, equipment destroyed in raids, and desperate improvisations amid shortages. One convoy leader warned incoming volunteers, “Try not to get killed.” Doctors described confiscations of supplies at checkpoints and the need to smuggle essential tools. “This boy was shot in the head. I tried to save him. But he died shortly after I intubated him. He died right in front of me,” Syed said of one attempt to resuscitate a young patient. British transplant surgeon and professor Nizam Mamode recounted discovering a clogged ventilator tube: “Full of maggots,” he said, “coming from the child’s throat.” In another case, Mamode said the operating team lacked even basic gauze—ironically associated with Gaza—forcing him to scoop blood by hand.
To test their clinical impressions, the newspaper obtained photographs and X-rays of dozens of pediatric gunshot cases and requested expert review. Forensic pathologist Wim Van de Voorde emphasized the improbability of accidental head and chest hits at the volumes reported. Forensic pathologist Frank van de Goot said the X-rays showed bullets lodged in children’s skulls that likely were fired from long distances—consistent with sniper or drone fire and with the thinner cranial bones of children preventing through-and-through wounds. The doctors stressed their tally was conservative: children who died immediately often never reached their departments; the volunteers rotated through specific facilities for limited periods; and many chose not to document cases explicitly for fear of being barred from reentry.
As the war evolved, clinicians said the pattern of deliberate harm expanded beyond shootings. They described an influx of patients with tiny cube- or cylinder-shaped metal fragments embedded deep inside the body—fragments that produced catastrophic internal injuries while leaving only minuscule entry wounds. Several doctors said these injuries matched fragmentation effects they had seen in other conflicts; one surgeon said he later handed fragments he removed from patients to international investigators. At the same time, doctors reported what they called the gamification of violence. Multiple surgeons described days when waves of victims arrived with the same target zones—first head and neck, then chest, then limbs, then abdomens, even genitals—suggesting a coordinated pattern of aim rather than random outcomes. At food distribution points, where civilians queued in hopes of receiving aid, doctors said the shooting was so routine that patients sometimes arrived still carrying empty food bags.
The human toll on children, said the volunteers, cannot be separated from the siege and bombardment that frame their clinical observations. Operating under loosened rules of engagement and amid prolonged deprivation, Israeli forces have killed more than 20,000 Palestinian children and disabled over 21,000 others since October 2023, according to Gaza authorities, U.N. agencies, and international humanitarian groups. Medical workers coined a shorthand for a new and devastating category of patient: WCNSF—wounded child, no surviving family. Over 1,500 medical personnel have also been killed, including paramedics slain while attempting to rescue five-year-old Hind Rajab, who was later discovered dead alongside six relatives after trying to flee. Early in the war, the United Nations Children’s Fund called Gaza “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child,” and the U.N. secretary-general added Israel to his global list of conflict parties that kill and injure children.
Some testimonies have reached international forums. In May 2025, Sidhwa addressed the United Nations Security Council about what he witnessed in emergency rooms and intensive care units. “I did not see or treat a single combatant during my five weeks in Gaza,” he said, part of a broader statement that sought to center the experiences of children and pregnant women torn apart by explosives and gunfire. The clinicians acknowledged the personal and professional risks of speaking publicly: being denied reentry to Gaza, jeopardizing their humanitarian partnerships, and carrying the weight of stories that defy clinical detachment. Yet, as one physician put it, silence felt impossible after seeing small bodies lined in corridors, after stepping over a boy who reached up from a pool of blood to clutch a pant leg as the doctor moved on to save another child.
Despite official denials, the pattern described by frontline medical workers—single-shot head and chest wounds in young children, consistent accounts of sniper or drone fire, and synchronized targeting of body regions on particular days—points to a systematic practice they say is incompatible with the laws of war. Their accounts also intersect with broader allegations of starvation as a weapon and the use of munitions that produce distinctive fragmentation injuries in densely populated areas. The doctors’ conclusions are clinical, grounded in wounds they dressed, surgeries they performed, and death certificates they signed. For them, the evidence is written in X-rays, in photographs they hesitated to take, and in diaries scribbled between mass-casualty alerts. As Syed said after deciding to document the injuries that passed through her hands, “I realized—these are war crimes.”
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