Gaza Doctors Recall Horrors of Daily Child Shootings

A trauma surgeon who worked in Gaza from March 25 to April 18 this year has detailed the daily atrocities international doctors witness in the midst of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

In the opinion essay published on Wednesday by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, he interviewed dozens of American surgeons and physicians who had volunteered to treat the sick and injured in the most volatile region of the conflict. Many volunteers were there due to family or religious ties to the Middle East, yet Sidhwa noted that he "felt compelled to volunteer in Gaza for a variety of reasons."

Sidhwa was astonished at the almost ubiquitous sight of child casualties.

"Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or chest, virtually all of whom when on to die. Thirteen in total," he said.

Speaking to another emergency physician, Sidhwa said that as he as he was explaining what he had witnessed, the colleague answered, "Yeah me, too. Every single day."

This revelation sent Sidhwa collecting information and interviewing a combined 65 doctors, nurses, and paramedics, all of whom had served on the front-lines in Gaza.

Dr. Mohamad Rassoui Abu-Nuwar, a bariatric and foregut surgeon from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, recalled, "One night in the emergency department, over the course of four hours, I saw six children between the ages of 5 and 12, all with single gunshot wounds to the skull."

Said Dr. Mark Perimutter, an orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina, "I saw several children shot with high-velocity bullet wounds, in both the head and chest."

Dr. Khawaja Ikram, an orthopedic surgeon from Dallas, Texas, said, "One day, while in the ER. I saw a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old, each with a single bullet hold in the head. When asked what happened, their father and brother said they had been told Israel was backing out of Khan Younis. So they returned to see if anything was left of their house. There was, they said, a sniper waiting to shoot both children."

While the implication was the deaths were the result of Israeli gunfire, the essay did not provide evidence as to which side of the conflict was responsible for the massive amount of child casualties.

The war between Israel and Hamas erupted following the Oct 7 massacre by Hamas terrorists in Israel, killing 1,200 civilians and taking hundreds more captive.

When reached for comment by the Times, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Force said, "The IDF is committed to mitigating civilian harm during operational activity. In that spirit, the IDF makes great efforts to estimate and consider potential civilian collateral damages in strikes. The IDF is fully committed to respecting all applicable international legal obligations, including the Law of Armed Conflict."

The doctors also detailed disturbing daily accounts of deaths due to dehydration, starvation, infections, and continuous calls of suicide from the survivors who had witnessed family member's suffering firsthand.

"One child who had lost all his family wished he had been killed, too, saying: 'Everyone I love is in heaven. I don't want to be here anymore,' " recalled pediatric critical care physician Tanya Haj-Hasson.

Sidhwa ended his essay by calling for an end to the U.S. arming of Israel saying that the two countries are "turning Gaza into a howling wilderness."