Shoot to kill: How Israeli snipers target Palestinians in cold blood and get away with it

By Humaira Ahad

One fine morning in February, 3-year-old Palestinian boy Imad Hazem excitedly rushed to buy oranges from a street vendor. Eager to eat his favorite fruit, he hurried back home.

While crossing a street in the Sheikh Radwan area of Gaza City, three kilometers from the city center, an Israeli sniper shot and killed him and his 20-year-old cousin Hadeel on the spot.

A graphic video documenting the crime went viral on social media, showing the bodies of the young child and his cousin.

In January, an Israeli sniper killed 13-year-old Nahid and 20-year-old Ramez Barbak in the Al-Amal neighborhood of Khan Younis, a city in the southern Gaza Strip.

Following Israel's evacuation orders, Nahid was waving a white flag above his head when he was shot just outside his house. Ramez ran to save his younger brother, only to be shot in the chest, falling over Nahid and the white flag.

Their bodies remained unattended on the road for hours as their family, unable to approach due to continuous Israeli gunfire and bombings, watched helplessly.

In December 2023, two Palestinian women who sought refuge in the Church of the Holy Family in Gaza were killed by an Israeli sniper inside the place of worship, which they had considered the safest place in the besieged strip.

In February, 14-year-old Ruwa Qdeih was declared dead after being shot by an Israeli sniper at the entrance to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis city.

In December 2023, 16-year-old Sama Berqenie, holding a white flag, was killed on the spot in northern Gaza when an Israeli sniper fired directly at her.

In January, a video went viral showing an Israeli sniper shooting at a group of young Gazan men carrying a white flag in the Al Mawasi neighborhood along the Mediterranean coast, a designated "safe zone."

The sniper killed a Palestinian man who gestured with his hand.

In another January incident, a Palestinian grandmother, Hala Khreis, was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while following the Israeli military’s evacuation orders, carrying a white flag.

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Several reports indicate that Israeli snipers shot and killed numerous Palestinians in July after the Israeli military issued an evacuation order for Palestinians to head south, stepping up its offensive across the besieged territory.

These instances are only a glimpse of the larger picture, experts say. The Israeli regime has targeted hundreds of Palestinians during its year-long genocidal war on Gaza, which has already claimed nearly 43,000 lives, most of them children and women.

The United Nations has expressed shock at the "deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing of Palestinian women and children in places where they sought refuge or while fleeing."

Most victims were holding white flags when Israeli regime soldiers mercilessly killed them.

Euro-Med Monitor, a Geneva-based human rights group, has documented instances of Israeli army snipers primarily targeting civilians in shelters, hospitals, streets, and residential areas.

"Israeli sniping operations, killings, and executions primarily target unarmed civilians in shelters, hospitals, streets, and residential areas. These civilians pose no threat or danger to anyone, as they are not participants in any hostilities," Euro-Med stated in a report.

Testimonies of foreign doctors who volunteered in Gaza

Foreign doctors volunteering in Gaza have described the situation in the besieged strip as "horrific", with regime forces deliberately shooting at Palestinian children and adults in the head and chest.

"I have two children whose photographs I took. They were shot so perfectly in the chest that I couldn’t have placed my stethoscope over their hearts more accurately,” Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon who volunteered in Gaza, was quoted as saying.

“They were also shot on the side of the head. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the 'world’s best sniper’. These were dead-center shots.”

Another US doctor said he had to look again at CT scans because he "didn’t believe this many children could be admitted to a single hospital with gunshot wounds to the head."

Irfan Galaria, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon based in the US, said Gaza was unlike any other war zone where he volunteered.

"What I witnessed during the next 10 days in Gaza was not war — it was annihilation."

Galaria recounted a chilling experience in the Los Angeles Times, describing how a group of children, all between 5 and 8 years old, were carried into the emergency room by their parents.

All of them had single sniper shots to the head. None of these children survived.

Dr. Fozia Alvi, a Canadian physician who volunteered in Gaza, recalled her last day at the European Public Hospital, where she encountered two young arrivals with facial injuries and breathing tubes.

"They were seven or eight years old, with sniper shots to the brain," she recounted. "They were paraplegic, lying as vegetables on those beds."

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Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma and general surgeon who worked in Gaza for two weeks, has been advocating for an arms embargo on the Israeli regime.

"Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or chest, nearly all of whom died," Sidhwa was quoted as saying, sharing his experience.

Sidhwa said he spoke with 65 healthcare workers, 57 of whom confirmed cases of children being shot by Israeli snipers in the head or chest.

Doctors assert that the location of the wounds and the details provided by families confirm that the victims were deliberately targeted by Israeli snipers.

"They said people began returning to their homes because the army had left, but the snipers stayed behind. Families reported that the snipers opened fire on their children," Dr. Vanita Gupta, a U.S.-based intensive care doctor, was quoted as saying by The Guardian.

A group of 99 American physicians and medical professionals who volunteered in Gaza recently wrote to the US government, urging an immediate end to military, economic, and diplomatic support for the regime in Tel Aviv.

"It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza, sustained over the course of an entire year, is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilian and military authorities," read the statement.

Quadcopters used for targeted killings in Gaza

On October 9, Mohammed Al-Tanani, a 26-year-old Palestinian journalist working for Palestine’s Al-Aqsa TV channel, was killed by an Israeli quadcopter that fired near his crew covering the regime’s attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

In a horrifying incident, mentally and physically disabled Elyas Osama Ezz El-Din Abu Jama, 17, was killed along with his 19-year-old brother Muhib in the Al-Sabour refugee camp in Rafah.

"We heard gunfire around us in the evening. In less than a minute, a quadcopter overhead started shooting right at our tent," their father, Osama Ezz El-Din Abu Jama, recounted.

In December 2023, three-year-old Amir Odeh was shot in the chest by a quadcopter drone while in a room at the Palestinian Red Crescent Society’s headquarters in Khan Yunis.

The Israeli army has increasingly used quadcopters, or small drones, to fire directly at Palestinians, killing and injuring many. These quadcopters act as remote-controlled snipers.

“The Israeli army is using small killer drones fitted with machine guns and missiles from the Matrice 600 and LANIUS categories, which are highly mobile and versatile, i.e. ideal for short-term operations. Their systems can automatically search buildings and create maps to identify possible targets,” the human rights organization wrote in its report.

Wilhelmi Massay, a critical care and trauma nurse from Omaha, Nebraska, who spent nearly a month volunteering at the Indonesian Hospital in Deir el-Balah (northern Gaza) and the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis (southern Gaza) recently was one of the signatories of the letter to Biden.

In an interview with the Press TV website, he shared his harrowing experiences and observations of working amid the ongoing genocidal war that completed one year earlier this month.

“It was a massacre—death, suffering, and devastation at every turn. Israeli bombings targeted displaced civilians, and sniper fire was a relentless threat,” Massay recalled.

On his experiences in Gaza, Massay told the Press TV website that he and his colleagues treated an “overwhelming number of gunshot wounds to the head, neck, chest, and lower extremities.”

“These shots were deliberately aimed by Israeli forces as fatal shots to the heart, head, and neck. Most of the victims were children under 18, with women making up a large portion of those killed or injured,” he said, noting that 69 percent of fatalities in Gaza are children and women.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk