They Hunted Gaza's Children
Foreign doctors returned furious and shattered after treating 114 children shot once in the head or chest by Israeli forces. Most died in their arms. They call it deliberate murder, not war.
Foreign doctors and nurses went into Gaza's hospitals to save lives and fix bodies torn apart by bombs. They came out broken, angry, and unable to stay silent. Fifteen out of seventeen doctors told Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant they treated at least 114 Palestinian children fifteen and under with the exact same injury: one high-velocity bullet straight to the head or chest and nothing else on those small bodies. The kids arrived dead or dying fast. Israeli snipers and drones hunted them down with careful shots meant to kill.
American trauma surgeon Feroze Sidhwa worked at European Hospital in March 2024. On his first day he walked into the ICU and saw two boys, eight or ten years old, lying still with bandaged heads on ventilators. A Palestinian nurse pointed at their heads and said, “Shot, shot.” Sidhwa looked at the scans. Then he stepped into the next room and found two more boys in exactly the same condition. All four had arrived in the last forty-eight hours.
“I thought: what the hell? 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?”
He kept seeing it every day. In the next thirteen days he counted nine more kids with single shots to the head or chest. By the time he left he had recorded thirteen children shot in the head.
“Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die. I couldn’t believe the number of kids I saw shot in the head.”
British emergency doctor Mimi Syed kept her own count. She documented eighteen children hit the same way. One boy came in with a head wound.
“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.”
She wrote in her notes about a seven-year-old girl:
“Gunshot wound to the chest. Dead on arrival. Tried to save her. Part of a larger mass casualty incident. On the floor, no cots. Nearly slipped in blood.”
Then there was four-year-old Mira. Colleagues told Syed an Israeli quadcopter drone shot her in the head while the little girl walked in a humanitarian zone the Israeli army had declared safe. They told Syed to let her die. Mira was still moving.
“I was told to just let her die by my colleagues 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.”
They saved Mira. Most others never got that chance.
Syed started taking photos of the wounds.
“I had multiple pediatric patients, mostly under the age of 12, who were shot in the head or the left side of the chest. Many died unnecessarily. This is not crossfire. These are war crimes.”
Orthopedic surgeon Mark Perlmutter has done thirty years of medical missions around the world. Nothing prepared him for what Israeli forces did in Gaza. He turned over dead children on the hospital floor trying to find anyone still breathing.
“Children were everywhere. I was turning them over, trying to see who I could still help. And then I saw those two little boys. They were dead. They had both been shot—through the chest and the head. Six or seven years old.”
He pulled sniper bullets out of eight-year-olds. He saw toddlers shot twice.
“I have children that were shot twice. Once in the chest right over where I would put my stethoscope and then perfectly in their temple and their brains were missing.”
He described the shots in detail on CBS.
“I have two children that I have photographs of that were shot so perfectly in the chest, I couldn’t put my stethoscope over their heart more accurately and directly on the side of the head in the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the world’s best sniper. And they’re dead-centre shots.”
The pattern repeated across every hospital the doctors worked in: Nasser, Al-Aqsa, European Gaza, Al-Shifa. One day the wounds were mostly to the head and neck. The next day to the chest. Then limbs. Then bellies. Then even the groin. British surgeon Nick Maynard watched it shift like someone was playing a sick game with targets.
“One day, they saw mostly gunshot wounds to the head and neck. The next day, it was the chest. The other day it was the limbs. Then the abdomen. Or even the testicles. A urology resident told me he had four boys in a single day who had been shot in the groin. It’s almost as if a game is being played, that they’re deciding to shoot the head today, the neck tomorrow, the testicles the day after.”
Anesthesiologist Ahlia Kattan tried to help a tiny girl not even two years old. The child arrived dead.
“She was dead but her mother was screaming—heartbreaking cries. While I was working on her, someone handed me the scan. And then I saw it: a bullet in her head. I saw the blood. A perfect shot to the temple.”
Emergency doctor Adil Husain held a boy shot in the head, neck, and belly. He gave the child ketamine so the end would not hurt so much.
“I held him closely and I whispered in his ear: I’m sorry.”
MSF nurse Jack Latour saw things that still haunt him.
“I’ve seen numerous children with brain matter hanging out. I’m sorry—I know no one wants to hear that. But that is what’s happening here.”
Canadian doctors who spoke to the Guardian described the same horror.
“They had sniper shots to the brain. They were seven or eight years old.”
One remembered a five- or six-year-old girl on the floor getting CPR.
“One child, I could see there was a shot to the head. They were doing CPR on this five- or six-year-old girl who obviously died. There was another little girl about the same age. I saw a bullet entry wound on her head. Her father was there, crying and asking me, ‘Can you save her?’”
Retired British surgeon Nizam Mamode heard children describe the Israeli drones themselves.
“I was lying on the ground after a bomb had dropped and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me.”
The hospitals were hellholes with no anesthesia, no gauze, maggots in the equipment, and doctors cutting off limbs with scissors. Babies starved to death even as a trickle of aid came in. The smell of rot and dead bodies filled the air. Almost every patient was a civilian. Many kids came in labeled WCNSF—Wounded Child No Surviving Family. Their parents and siblings were already gone.
A survey of fifty-three American medical workers who treated children in Gaza found that eighty-three percent saw kids shot in the head or chest. It was not one hospital. It was everywhere.
Forensic pathologists and retired Dutch army commander Lt. Gen. Mart de Kruif looked at the X-rays and photos the doctors brought back. De Kruif said the numbers left no room for doubt.
“Just think about how small the head is compared to the rest of the body. 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.”
Israeli forces deny it all. They say they do not target children and blame Hamas for civilian deaths. The doctors heard the denials. They still cannot unsee the bodies of those shot kids.
These medical workers went to Gaza to heal. They came home furious and sad and unable to stay quiet. Some smuggled out metal fragments from the wounds and handed them to the International Criminal Court. They took photos of the wounds because the world needs to know exactly what Israeli snipers and drones did to those children.
Mimi Syed put it plain after she left.
“I don’t understand how shooting children deliberately is justified.”
The children of Gaza did not die in crossfire. They did not die from stray bullets or collapsing buildings. Israeli demon snipers and drones hunted them down with one careful shot after another. The doctors saw it with their own eyes, day after day after day.
I could not stop crying. I remembered when I first saw the witness testimony of the doctors as they were in Gaza or after they returned, how horrified I was not only to hear them but to see the world leaders doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the face of this blatant atrocity. I still cry. I still pray for these children to receive long overdue justice.
They've lost any humanity that existed in their souls. This is... I don't even have words for this. 💔