By Elham Asaad Buaras
London, (The Muslim News): A damning investigation published on Saturday by Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, titled ‘What the wounds are telling us’, has revealed a systematic pattern of deliberate child killings by Israeli forces in Gaza. The report quotes firsthand testimonies from international medics. It details how doctors have treated scores of children with precise, single gunshot wounds to the head or chest. Injuries, forensic experts state, are indicative of targeted attacks. This chilling evidence emerges as the Palestinian death toll surpasses 64,800. The Gaza Health Ministry reports nearly 20,000 of the dead are children.
The investigation is based on interviews with 17 international doctors and one nurse who have worked in Gaza since October 2023. It presents a consistent, horrifying account. Fifteen of the medical professionals reported treating at least 114 children aged 15 and under with fatal, single gunshot wounds to the head or chest.
US trauma surgeon Dr Feroze Sidhwa described the shocking moment he began his mission at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in March 2024. “Within 48 hours, I encountered four boys under ten with identical head wounds,” he said. “How is it possible that here in this small hospital, within 48 hours, four children have come in who were shot in the head?” Over the next two weeks, he treated nine more children with the same injuries.
American emergency physician Dr Mimi Syed documented cases of children being shot in areas designated as safe. “A little girl, four years old, was shot by a quadcopter while walking in a humanitarian zone declared by Israel,” she recounted. “I intubated her myself. Moments later, I stared in disbelief at the scan of her head: there’s a bullet lodged inside.” Dr Syed believed she was documenting potential war crimes. She photographed 18 children with these signature wounds.
Forensic pathologists consulted by the newspaper concluded the injuries’ uniformity strongly suggested deliberate targeting. “It is highly likely these were long-distance shots aimed at the head or neck using military-grade ammunition,” said Professor Wim Van de Voorde, Emeritus at the University of Leuven. Former Dutch Army commander Mart de Kruif called the chance of accidental hits “negligible,” noting, “A high number of gunshot wounds to the chest and head is not collateral damage — that’s deliberate targeting.”
The report also cites evidence of other controversial weapons. British surgeon Professor Nizam Mamode described crippling shortages that forced him to improvise in gruesome ways. “I had to scoop blood out of a child’s body with my hands because there was no gauze,” he said. Another British surgeon, Dr Mark Perlmutter, stated he regularly found small, cube-shaped metal fragments in patients’ bodies, which he believes are from Israeli-made fragmentation weapons. “I smuggled two metal fragments out of Gaza… I handed them over to the International Criminal Court,” he told the paper.
The Israeli military has consistently denied all accusations. In a response to de Volkskrant, the IDF called claims about using fragmentation weapons “a blatant falsehood” and stated it does not possess or deploy them.
The military did not, however, answer specific questions about snipers shooting children, saying only that it is Hamas that is “creating dangerous conditions for civilians.”
These revelations come as the Ministry of Health in Gaza announced on Saturday that at least 64,803 Palestinians have been killed since Israel bombings began in October 2023. In the past 24 hours, 47 bodies were brought to hospitals alongside 205 wounded, bringing the total number of injuries to 164,264, with countless more still trapped under rubble.
The violence continued relentlessly over the weekend. Israeli airstrikes across Gaza killed at least 62 Palestinians since dawn on Saturday, nearly 50 of them in Gaza City.
The Civil Defence agency reported that more than 6,000 people were made homeless in a single day as neighbourhoods collapsed under bombardment.
In the occupied West Bank, a 21-year-old man died of gunshot wounds inflicted by Israeli troops near Ramallah. Illegal Israeli settler attacks, often conducted with army protection, targeted Palestinian homes and farmland in Jerusalem, Nablus, and Hebron.
For the international doctors who have served in Gaza, returning home has meant confronting a profound moral duty to speak out. Many testified that they were forever changed by the experience.
Addressing the UN Security Council in May, Dr Sidhwa stated, “I am a physician bearing witness to the deliberate destruction of a healthcare system, the targeting of my own colleagues, and the erasure of a people… I did not see or treat a single combatant during my five weeks in Gaza. My patients were six-year-olds—with shrapnel in their heart and bullets in their brains.” They now carry the unbearable weight of their testimony, and the crushing realisation that their governments have, so far, failed to act decisively to stop the bloodshed they witnessed firsthand.
[Feature photo: de Volkskrant | Report Title: What the Wounds Are Telling Us (Published September 13, 2025)]
