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"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?" said one US trauma surgeon.
International medical professionals who volunteered in Gaza hospitals said they treated more than 100 Palestinian children who were shot in the head or chest by Israeli forces in what appears to be a pattern of deliberate targeting, according to an investigation published Saturday by a Dutch newspaper.
De Volkskrant interviewed 17 doctors and a nurse from the Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and United States who worked in six hospitals and four clinics in Gaza since October 2023. Fifteen of the 17 doctors described treating 114 children under the age of 15 who had a single bullet wound to the head or chest.
Former Royal Netherlands Army Commander Lt. Gen. Mart de Kruif told de Volkskrant's Maud Effting and Willem Feenstra that such wounds mean that the victims were all but certainly shot on purpose.
"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.”
Dr. Mimi Syed, a US emergency physician who volunteered for two four-week rotations at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and al-Aqsa Martyrs Government Hospital in Deir al-Balah, described one 4-year-old victim, a girl named Mira.
“They said she’d been shot by a quadcopter [drone] while walking around in the humanitarian zone declared by Israel," Syed told de Volkskrant. "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.”
Working with colleagues, Syed saved Mira. Seeing so many similar injuries, she thought: "I have to document this. I realized—these are war crimes.”
Syed documented 18 children with single-shot wounds to the head or chest.
Mira, a Palestinian girl from Gaza, survived a single gunshot wound to her head. (Photo: Dr. Mimi Syed via de Volkskrant)
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a 43-year-old California trauma surgeon, described his first day volunteering at European Hospital in Gaza in March 2024. Sidhwa—who has previously described seeing children as young as 3 years old being deliberately targeted in numerous interviews and his own writing—told de Volkskrant that he saw four boys under age 10 with identical head wounds within 48 hours of his arrival.
"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 similar single gunshot wounds to the head and chest by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers, who pride themselves on being some of the world's best-trained marksmen. Israel and the US have frequently described the IDF as the "most moral army" in the world.
"I started to wonder if my hospital was near some crazy sniper," he said. "Or a drone team killing children just for fun."
Numerous previous investigations have documented IDF soldiers deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in Gaza. In July, the BBC examined the cases of more than 160 Palestinian children who were shot by IDF troops in Gaza and found that in 95 cases, the child was shot in the head or chest.
"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.
IDF officials deny that Israeli troops deliberately target children and have even claimed that Hamas may be shooting them in a new iteration of the age-old blood libel against Jews. Israeli and US officials have also claimed that hundreds of Palestinians have starved to death in Gaza not because of Israel's near-total blockade on humanitarian relief but because Hamas is stealing the aid—even as IDF officers have refuted the theft allegations.
Israeli troops have admitted to being ordered to shoot to kill "anyone who enters" a so-called "kill zone" in central Gaza, including children.
Other IDF whistleblowers have described orders to open fire on Gazan civilians including children with live bullets and artillery at aid distribution centers.
“We’re killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs," one IDF officer said earlier this year. "We’re destroying their houses and pissing on their graves.”
One IDF soldier even boasted online about how "fun" it is to kill Palestinian children, while another is heard saying in a video uploaded to social media that “we are looking for babies, but there are no babies left"—so instead "I killed a girl that was 12."
Yet another IDF soldier proudly claimed: “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.”
Operating under loosened rules of engagement that effectively permit the killing of an unlimited number of civilians when targeting even a single low-ranking Hamas member, Israeli troops have killed more than 20,000 Palestinian children and disabled over 21,000 others in Gaza since October 2023, according to Gaza officials, United Nations agencies, and international humanitarian groups.
The use of artificial intelligence to rapidly select targets, as well as dropping fragmentation, incendiary, and 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs—many supplied by the US—has exacerbated the civilian casualty crisis and contributed to an unprecedented surge in amputations, often performed without anesthesia.
So many wounded Gazan children have also been orphaned that medical professionals have coined a grim new acronym to describe them: WCNSF—wounded child, no surviving family.
According to Gaza and United Nations officials, more than 1,500 medical professionals have also been killed in Gaza since October 2023, many of them while working, including the paramedics who were killed while trying to rescue Hind Rajab, a 5-year-old girl massacred along with six relatives while trying to flee to safety last year.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children are also being deliberately starved in a US-backed Israeli war of conquest and occupation that is increasingly viewed by the world as genocidal, and that has left at least 238,500 Gazans dead, maimed, or missing. Last week, former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi acknowledged that Israel has killed or wounded 10% of Gaza's pre-war population of approximately 2.2 million.
Early in the war, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) called Gaza “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child.” Last year, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called “List of Shame” of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts.
"This is the latest chapter in the genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza and part of a broader campaign of ethnic cleansing engulfing the entire Gaza Strip," said Oxfam International.
Israel's US-backed campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza City has left nearly 1 million people—half of them starved by design—with nowhere to seek refuge, United Nations agencies and other humanitarian groups warned Wednesday.
"We are witnessing a dangerous escalation in Gaza City, where Israeli forces have stepped up their operations and ordered everyone to move south. This comes two weeks after famine was confirmed in the city and surrounding areas," said the UN Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), a strategic forum of UN agency heads and over 200 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
"While Israeli authorities have unilaterally declared an area in the south as 'humanitarian,' it has not taken effective steps to ensure the safety of those forced to move there and neither the size nor scale of services provided is fit to support those already there, let alone new arrivals," HCT continued.
"Nearly 1 million people are now left with no safe or viable options—neither the north nor the south offers safety," HCT added.
One elderly woman caring for an injured 8-year-old girl who is one of tens of thousands of children orphaned by Israeli attacks told Amnesty International Wednesday that "she's all that I have left, and I have tried everything I can to protect her."
"We have been displaced twice just in the last week," the woman added. "We don't have the means to go to the south, and we are tired of being forced to relive this ordeal all over again."
An elderly disabled woman living in a makeshift refugee camp in southern Gaza City told Amnesty that "we were displaced from Sheikh Radwan three weeks ago; my son had to carry me on his shoulders because I have no wheelchair and no transportation could reach our area."
"Now we are ordered to evacuate again. Where do we go?" she asked. "To secure transportation to the south, you have to pay close to 4,000 shekels ($1,200) and to buy a tent, you have to pay at least 3,000 shekels and we don't know if we'll find any land to pitch our tent on."
"We had already spent all our savings to survive this war, looking for food and basics," the woman added. "Every day is like the war is starting all over again, only far worse, but we are totally depleted, we have no will or strength to carry on."
Photos showing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians—including some with donkey-drawn carts—slowly streaming southward from Gaza City evoked images from the Nakba, when more than 750,000 Arabs were ethnically cleansed from Palestine by Zionist terror militias during the establishment of modern Israel.
The World Health Organization (WHO), a UN body, warned Wednesday that "starvation and malnutrition in Gaza are at the highest levels ever since the conflict began almost two years ago," and that "deliberate blocking and delay of large-scale food, health, and humanitarian aid has cost many lives."
"After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterized by starvation, destitution, and death," the agency added. "Another 1.07 million people (54%) are in 'emergency' (IPC Phase 4), and 396,000 people (20%) are in 'crisis' (IPC Phase 3)."
WHO also cited overall casualties in Gaza—now approaching at least 65,000 deaths, mostly women and children—and 164,000 injuries, according to the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM)—and noted that "as of September 5, 2025, there have been 2,339 reported fatalities among aid-seekers near militarized distribution sites and along convoy routes since May 27."
Oxfam International—a coalition of over 20 independent NGOs focused on alleviating poverty—echoed the UN experts, asserting that "Israel's intent to displace around 1 million civilians, half of whom are living in famine, is impossible and illegal."
"Displacement orders, on leaflets thrown from the sky, or posted on social media, signal grave next steps, a scene all too familiar in Gaza where every order has preceded new waves of destruction and mass casualties," Oxfam said. "This is the latest chapter in the genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza and part of a broader campaign of ethnic cleansing engulfing the entire Gaza Strip, where nothing and no one has been spared."
Heba Morayef, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said Wednesday that Israel's mass displacement order for Gaza City residents "is cruel, unlawful, and further compounds the genocidal conditions of life that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians."
"Gaza City... is now facing complete obliteration," Morayef added. "It is evident that Israel is determined in pursuing its goal to physically destroy Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It is unconscionable that states with leverage over Israel continue to provide it with arms and diplomatic support to destroy Palestinian lives."
Operation Gideon's Chariots 2—Israel's plan to "conquer, cleanse, and stay" in Gaza and "annihilate everything" there—as Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently put it—has ramped up in recent days, with intensified Israeli air and artillery strikes and ground troops pushing deeper into Gaza City.
According to GHM, at least 72 Palestinians were killed and a minimum of 356 others were wounded by Israeli forces across Gaza on Thursday, including children and infants. At least 53 of the victims were killed in Gaza City. Israeli strikes reportedly targeted homes, tents housing refugees, and aid distribution points.
Additionally, GHM said that seven Palestinians including a child died from starvation over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of famine-related deaths in Gaza to at least 411, 142 of them children.
"In every sector... corruption is increasing," said one protester. "Students are being killed by police... We would like to request that the government of Nepal stand down."
Nepalese Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli resigned Tuesday as youth-led anti-corruption protesters set fire to government buildings and assaulted officials as they fled for their lives as the number of demonstrators killed by state forces rose to at least 22.
On Monday, state security forces attacked protesters with weapons including water cannons, tear gas, batons, steel-coated rubber bullets, and live ammunition, killing at least 19 people and wounding upward of 350 others in the capital Kathmandu and other cities. Medical responders said that many of the protesters had been shot in the chest or head.
The BBC reported three more people were killed on Tuesday, bringing the death toll to at least 22. Protesters in Kathmandu stormed and set fire to the Singha Durbar—which houses the Nepalese Parliament and several government ministries—as well as the home of Oli, who was serving his third nonconsecutive term and said he resigned "in order to take further steps towards a political solution."
Video recordings posted on social media show protesters chasing and assaulting Finance Minister Bishnu Paudel, who is seen stripped to his underwear and dragged through a street. Another video shows bank notes raining from the sky as demonstrators set Energy Minister Deepak Khadka's home on fire.
Yet another video posted on social media shows Foreign Minister Arju Rana Deuba and her husband, former Prime Minister and Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba, bloodied after their home was attacked and burned. The home of Jhala Nath Khanal, another former prime minister, was also torched. Khanal's wife, Ravi Laxmi Chitrakar, was inside the house at the time and was severely burned, according to The New York Times.
The Condition of four time PM of Nepal @SherBDeuba and his wife curent foreign minister Arju Deuba Rana pic.twitter.com/BxrQUm9QBs
— IN- Depth Story (@in_depthstory) September 9, 2025
The demonstrations, now in their second day, were sparked by growing outrage over government corruption and impunity, pervasive nepotism personified by the "nepo-kid" children of powerful officials, and the September 4 nationwide ban on 26 social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, WhatsApp, X, and YouTube.
The ban came after the companies missed a government-imposed registration deadline. Some social media platforms, such as Nimbuzz, TikTok, Viber, and WeTalk registered in time and were allowed to remain in operation.
Critics, who include Kathmandu Mayor Balen Shah—a 35-year-old rapper-turned-politician who many believe could be a future prime minister—called the ban an attack on free expression and businesses that depend on social media for sales and marketing.
Although the government subsequently lifted the ban amid the nascent protests, the move came too late—and, critically, the social media proscription was only part of the problem.
"It's shameful to see international media framing Nepal's Gen-Z protest as merely against the social media ban. That's not what it is about," Nepalese physicist Sunny Labh wrote Monday on social media. "The protest was—and still is—against a corrupt system, unchecked government privileges, and years of exploitation. Reducing it to just the ban is dishonest and insulting to the movement."
One student protester in Kathmandu told The New Indian Express: "We are not fighting Oli, we are fighting Oli-ism—the system that rewards loyalty over competence, wealth over work, and silence over truth."
Satish Mandal, a 26-year-old protester in the capital, told the BBC that "Nepal is being corrupted day by day."
"In every sector, especially in heath and education, corruption is increasing," he added. "Students are being killed by police... We would like to request that the government of Nepal stand down."
It is unclear who will be Nepal's next prime minister. On Tuesday, the army issued a statement saying it would secure law and order, starting at 10:00 pm local time.
International human rights defenders condemned the deadly crackdown.
"We call on the authorities to respect and ensure the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression," United Nations Human Rights Office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said in a statement Monday. "All security forces must comply with the basic principles on the use of force and firearms by law enforcement officials."
"Nepal enjoys a lively democracy and active civic space, and dialogue is the best means to address young people's concerns," Shamdasani added. "We urge reconsideration of measures to regulate social media to ensure they comply with Nepal's human rights obligations."
Amnesty International Nepal director Nirajan Thapaliya said Monday that "the protestors have a right to peacefully protest and express their frustration and outrage against corruption and the government's restriction on the right to freedom of expression including the social media ban in Nepal."
"It is the obligation of Nepali authorities to respect this right in line with its commitments under international law as well as its own constitution and protect all protesters from further harm," Thapaliya added. "The government must genuinely listen to the legitimate demands of the youth to end corruption, deliver accountability, and ensure civil liberties instead of meting out such reckless violence against them."