Doctors from across the world, who are treating wounded children inside the besieged Gaza Strip, claim that Palestinian children are being targeted by Israeli snipers- with one medical professional describing their actions as a "dark stain on our shared humanity."
Canadian Doctor Fozia Alvi told the Guardian that she recently entered a hospital room and saw two little children with severe facial wounds and breathing tubes.
"I asked the nurse, what's the history? She said that they were brought in a couple of hours ago. They had sniper shots to the brain. They were seven or eight years old," she told the outlet.
"They were not able to talk, paraplegic. They were literally lying down as vegetables on those beds. They were not the only ones. I saw even small children with direct snipershot wounds to the head as well as in the chest. They were not combatants, they were small children."
Alvi's experience is not unique - medical professionals across Gaza say that they've treated patients with sniper wounds who were obviously not combatants - people who were too young or too old or were waving white cloths at Israeli soldiers.
New York Doctor Vanita Gupta said that one day parents brought in several small children who had been outside, in an area with no ongoing fighting.
"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," Gupta told the Guardian.
And while several children had been brought in following this incident - there were no adults with related injuries.
The Israeli Defense Forces "completely rejects" allegations of civilians being targeted by snipers, adding that it "follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm."
However, some human rights advocates claim that IDF troops targeted Palestinian children long before the war on Gaza began.
"In the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers routinely shoot children in the head, chest or abdomen, all areas from which a child will quickly bleed out if they aren't killed instantly," Miranda Cleland of Defense for Children International Palestine told the Guardian.
"Many of these children are shot by Israeli forces from great distances, sometimes upwards of 500 feet, which is something only a trained military sniper would be capable of."
An ex-Israeli sniper, who spoke to the Guardian anonymously, said that the IDF gives its soldiers a large amount of leeway in any area declared a combat zone.
"The problem is the regulations that enable soldiers who just want to shoot Palestinians. In my experience, most soldiers who pull a trigger only want to kill those who should be killed but there are those who regard all the Arabs as the enemy and find any reason to shoot or no reason at all," he said.
"Even if they are outside the regulations, the system will protect them. The army will cover up. The other soldiers in the unit will not object or they will celebrate another dead Arab. There's no accountability so even the loosest regulations have no real meaning."
Within three weeks of the October 7 Hamas attacks, more children were killed in Gaza than there had been in every other conflict combined since 2019. In the ensuing six months, upwards of 13,000 children were killed - constituting more than ⅓ of all Palestinian war deaths.
