LONDON: Israeli soldiers are opening fire on children in Gaza at aid distribution centers, targeting different body parts depending on the day of the week, a British doctor has said.
Prof. Nick Maynard, a gastrointestinal surgeon working at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, told the BBC that he and his colleagues are encountering “clear patterns of injury” in young casualties, including “certain body parts on different days, such as the head, legs or genitals.”
Speaking to the “Today” program on BBC Radio 4, Maynard said: “On one day they’ll all be abdominal gunshot wounds, on another they’ll all be head gunshot wounds or neck gunshot wounds, on another they’ll be arm or leg gunshot wounds.”
He added: “It’s almost as if a game is being played, that they’re deciding to shoot the head today, the neck tomorrow, the testicles the day after.”
Maynard said the victims at the aid distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which he called “death traps,” tend more often than not to be teenaged boys.
“These are mainly from the militarized distribution points, where starving civilians are going to try and get food but then report getting targeted by Israeli soldiers or quadcopters,” he added.
“A 12-year-old boy I was operating on died from his injuries on the operating table — he’d been shot through the chest.”
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READ MORE: British surgeon in Gaza describes wounded Palestinians dying due to malnutrition
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GHF sites, backed by the US and Israel, are manned by private contractors and Israeli soldiers.
At least 875 Palestinians seeking food at the centers have been killed by live fire since May, according to the UN.
Maynard said levels of malnutrition seen in young patients are affecting their ability to recover from their wounds.
“The repairs that we carry out fall to pieces, patients get terrible infections, and they die,” he added. “I’ve never had so many patients die because they can’t get enough food to recover.”
The BBC said other medics working in central and southern Gaza had also reported patterns of gunshot wounds in people shot at GHF centers.
