British surgeon testifies he saw mothers shot by IDF soldiers while breastfeeding

[east]

I’m writing this from Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, where I’ve just finished operating on another severely malnourished young teenager. A seven-month-old baby lies in our paediatric intensive care unit, so tiny and malnourished that I initially mistook her for a newborn. The phrase “skin and bones” doesn’t do justice to the way her body has been ravaged. She is literally wasting away before our eyes and, despite our best efforts, we are powerless to save her. We are witnessing deliberate starvation in Gaza right now.

Every day I watch patients deteriorate and die, not from their injuries, but because they are too malnourished to survive surgery. The surgical repairs that we carry out fall to pieces, patients get terrible infections, then they die. It is happening repeatedly, and it is heartbreaking to watch. Four babies have died in the last few weeks in this hospital – not from bombs or bullets, but from starvation.

Families and staff do their best to try to bring in what they can, but there simply isn’t enough food available in Gaza. For infants, we have virtually no baby formula. Children are being given 10% dextrose (sugar water), which has no nutritional value, and often their mothers are too malnourished to breastfeed. When an international colleague tried to bring baby formula into Gaza, Israeli authorities confiscated it.

My colleagues in the emergency department have also reported a disturbing pattern [in gunshot victims targeted at aid distribution sites - mainly teenage boys - needing treatment for similar] injuries concentrated on specific body parts on different days – heads, legs, genitals – suggesting deliberate targeting of those body parts.

Last Saturday, there were four young boys all brought in, very rapidly in succession, with gunshot wounds to their testicles. This is a pattern that we're seeing every day, with these young teenage boys being systematically targeted. 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.

In recent days, I operated on two women who were shot by quadcopters while sheltering in their tents near one of the locations, according to the people who brought them in. One was breastfeeding her child when she was hit; the second was pregnant. Thankfully, both have survived their injuries so far. These women weren’t even seeking aid – they were simply sheltering in areas that are supposedly “safe” but exposed to indiscriminate fire from the IDF’s weaponised hunger apparatus.

I’m witnessing the deliberate starvation of Gaza’s children – why is the world letting it happen? | Nick Maynard

A permanent ceasefire, the free and safe flow of aid, and the lifting of the blockade are needed now – all could be achieved with political will, says UK surgeon Nick Maynard

www.theguardian.com

 

[east]

A former US veteran who was employed at a food distribution site in Gaza has accused members of the Israel Defence Forces and American colleagues of deliberately targeting and killing unarmed Palestinian civilians.

Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Aguilar, a former special forces veteran, was recruited to work for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a joint Israeli-US scheme replacing the United Nations food distribution operation in Gaza.

He has told the BBC he witnessed the IDF shooting at the crowds of Palestinians, firing a main tank round into a car carrying civilians and firing mortars at crowds of hungry people waiting for food.

Mr Aguilar told the BBC: “In my entire career I have never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed starving population. I’ve never witnessed that in all the places I’ve been deployed to war, until I was in Gaza at the hands of the IDF and US contractors... Without question I witnessed war crimes by the Israeli Defence Forces, without a doubt. Using artillery rounds, mortar rounds, tank rounds into unarmed civilians is a war crime.”

The United Nations says hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza while seeking food at the aid distribution points run by the GHF.

Israel insists its forces have not targeted civilians, that it targets Hamas and that its use of force in Gaza is proportionate.

It comes as Israel faces international condemnation over the lack of food supplies reaching civilians in Gaza, with the UN and aid agencies reporting that people are dying of starvation.