In one of the most detailed and harrowing investigations of the Gaza war, the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant has assembled what may be the most comprehensive record yet of Israel’s base depravity in targeting civilians and children.
Their report, “What the wounds are telling us”, is built on months of interviews with international doctors who became the last eyewitnesses inside Gaza’s shattered hospitals — and on medical images, notes, and X-rays they carried out at great personal risk.
A pattern the doctors can’t ignore
De Volkskrant spoke with 17 doctors and a nurse from the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands. Fifteen of these doctors said they personally treated children aged 15 and under with single gunshot wounds to the head or chest — injuries that strongly indicate deliberate targeting. Using the most conservative counts, they documented at least 114 children; many did not survive.
American trauma surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidhwa arrived at Gaza’s European Hospital in March 2024 and immediately encountered four boys under ten, ventilated, heads bandaged — all with gunshot wounds to the head. American emergency physician Dr. Mimi Syed photographed 18 children shot in the head or chest; among them was Mira, a four-year-old reportedly shot by a quadcopter drone in a so-called humanitarian zone. Mira lived. Most did not.
Forensic pathologists who reviewed images and X-rays for de Volkskrant said the injuries were consistent with long-range gunfire using military-grade ammunition. Former Dutch Army commander Mart de Kruif concluded that the frequency and precision of head and chest wounds in children point to deliberate targeting — not stray fire.
Hospitals as the last newsroom
With foreign journalists largely barred from Gaza, operating theatres became newsrooms. Surgeons described amputations with scissors for lack of supplies; flies and maggots in open wounds; bullet-riddled imaging machines; and confiscation of medicines and even baby formula at checkpoints.
“I asked for gauze while operating on an eight-year-old,” recalled British transplant surgeon Prof. Nizam Mamode. “There was none. In the place the word ‘gauze’ comes from, I had to scoop blood with my hands.”
The “gamification” of shooting civilians
Doctors described waves of patients whose wounds seemed coordinated by body region: head and neck one day, abdomens the next, then limbs, even genitals. Oxford surgeon Nick Maynard said a urology resident treated four boys shot in the testicles in a single day. Others saw teenagers and young men shot in both arms and legs around food distribution points.
The pattern echoed earlier admissions by Israeli snipers (reported elsewhere) about “record-setting” body-part targeting — now, doctors allege, extended to children.
Fragmentation weapons: tungsten cubes tearing through children
De Volkskrant’s reporting also documents a second, devastating pattern: patients — including children — riddled with tiny cube- or cylinder-shaped metal fragments, producing small entry marks but catastrophic internal damage. Multiple doctors shared photos and videos of these fragment wounds; several said they extracted the metal themselves.
Veteran surgeon Mark Perlmutter says he recovered fragments he believes are tungsten, which he turned over to the International Criminal Court.
Tungsten is extremely dense and hard; when pre-formed fragments are packed into an explosive, the resulting blast sprays high-velocity projectiles with lethal, indiscriminate effect. In crowded civilian settings, such fragmentation (or “cluster-like”) weapons are unlawful under international humanitarian law because they cannot distinguish between civilians and combatants and are designed to cause superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering.
The doctors’ testimonies describe precisely that: children with small puncture wounds but massive internal bleeding, shredded organs, amputations, and deaths. Israel denies using such munitions, but the fragments, photos, and testimonies reviewed by de Volkskrant align with the hallmarks of tungsten cube fragmentation weapons — deployed with impunity, in defiance of the law.
WCNSF: Wounded Child, No Surviving Family
This sniper and fragmentation landscape sits atop Gaza’s broader calamity: mass bombardment, starvation, and medical collapse. Doctors describe a new label on patient sheets — WCNSF: Wounded Child, No Surviving Family.
Health authorities count tens of thousands of deaths, with children comprising a staggering share. In mass-casualty surges, clinicians triaged by necessity, sometimes pronouncing children “khalas” — enough — because resources had to be conserved to save someone else.
Witnesses to war crimes
The Volkskrant investigation is strengthened by cross-checks: independent forensic experts verified bullet injuries in skull X-rays; multiple doctors, across hospitals and months, recounted the same sniper and fragmentation patterns; and the newspaper reviewed hundreds of images, publishing only those that were not too graphic.
The emerging picture is not of isolated incidents but systemic practices consistent with war crimes: deliberate attacks on children and the use of fragmentation weapons — including tungsten cube munitions — in civilian areas, in defiance of the most basic rules of war.
A record the world can’t unknow
Doctors returned home changed. Some testified before parliaments; some addressed the UN; many fear they’ll be barred from returning if they speak. But they insist silence would be a deeper betrayal — of colleagues killed, of children they could not save, of the truth their hands recorded.
As Dr. Sidhwa told the UN Security Council: “My patients were six-year-olds with shrapnel in their hearts and bullets in their brains.”
De Volkskrant has done what governments, international bodies, and much of the Western press have refused to do: assemble the testimonies, the scans, the notes, the photos — and listen to what the wounds are telling us.
They tell of snipers and drones selecting children’s heads and chests; of tungsten cube fragmentation ripping through small bodies; of a war fought with impunity against the very laws meant to limit its cruelty.
The record now exists. The only question left is what the world will do with it.
