Israel Using Children in Gaza as “Target Practice,” UK Doctor Says

Israeli soldiers are using teenage boys near U.S.- and Israeli-backed “aid” sites in Gaza as “target practice,” according to a British doctor who recently provided care in the Palestinian territory.

Nick Maynard, a consultant surgeon at Oxford University hospital, has said in recent interviews with Zeteo and other media that he and other doctors in Gaza have noted a pattern of injuries in Israeli shootings of aid seekers at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites. Groups of boys, ranging from ages 11 to 16, will come into the hospital with gunshot wounds all on a specific part of the body, Maynard says.

“There were clusters of particular body parts being injured on particular days,” Maynard told Zeteo on Sunday. “One day, they would be coming in predominantly with gunshot wounds to the head or the neck. Most of them died, clearly. The next day, there’d be gunshot wounds to the chest, the next day, the abdomen, the next day, the legs or the arms.”

“One day, which was at the end of my third week, on the Saturday evening, four young teenage boys — 13, 14 — came in, all of whom had been shot in the testicles,” Maynard went on.

Maynard said that there were many days where so many people with the same injuries came in at once that “it was inconceivable that it could have been coincidence.”

“It appeared to us like there was a game of target practice being played,” he said to Zeteo. The weapons held by Israeli forces near the sites would allow soldiers to target children with such precision, Maynard added.

Maynard has also recounted this observation to other news outlets. He says that the medical teams would frequently see 6 to 12 patients with similar injuries on days that GHF sites were open.

Numerous reports from eyewitnesses, human rights groups, and news outlets have all revealed that Israeli forces are systematically opening fire on aid seekers near GHF sites on a near-daily basis.

Human Rights Watch released a report last week saying that the GHF system has “turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths,” citing numerous witnesses who have said that American contractors at the sites are also opening fire on Palestinians there.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) also released a report saying that the GHF system is “orchestrated killing.” Their analysis, which looked at patients arriving at a clinic near one aid site, showed that 30 percent of injuries were to the head, neck, or upper body — demonstrating an “anatomical precision” that “strongly suggests intentional targeting of people within the distribution sites.”

Nearly 1,400 Palestinians seeking aid have been killed by Israeli forces since the end of May, including over 850 Palestinians near GHF sites.

Every avenue for receiving humanitarian aid has become a potential death sentence for Palestinians, as Israeli forces also target people waiting along paths traveled by food convoys and foreign airdrops crush people in Gaza to death. Palestinian officials have recorded more than 200 deaths due to starvation, most of them in recent weeks, though far more have likely gone uncounted.