The surgeons, who have been working in Gaza over the past few months, emphasized the devastating effects of these weapons on the civilian population, especially children.
Surgeons volunteering in Gaza have reported severe injuries among children caused by Israeli-made weapons designed to maximize shrapnel dispersion, resulting in significant casualties, the British newspaper The Guardian said on Thursday.
These surgeons, who have been working in Gaza over the past few months, emphasized the devastating effects of these weapons on the civilian population, especially children.
Doctors at Gaza’s European Hospital and al-Aqsa Hospital described conducting numerous operations on children injured by tiny shrapnel fragments. These fragments often leave barely visible entry wounds but cause extensive internal damage.
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According to Amnesty International, these weapons seem to be intentionally designed to increase casualties.
“About half of the injuries I took care of were in young kids,” said Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon from California who worked at the European Hospital in southern Gaza in April.
“We saw a lot of so-called splinter injuries that were very, very small to the point that you easily missed them while examining a patient. Much, much smaller than anything I’ve seen before but they caused tremendous damage on the inside,” he added.
Weapons experts indicated that these injuries match the characteristics of Israeli-made weapons intended to maximize harm rather than merely destroying infrastructure. This raises concerns about their use in densely populated civilian areas.
Six foreign doctors who recently worked at Gaza’s hospitals confirmed the widespread injuries from these fragmentation weapons, resulting in a high number of amputations since the conflict began.
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“Children are more vulnerable to any penetrating injury because they have smaller bodies,” explained Sidhwa.
“Their vital parts are smaller and easier to disrupt. When children have lacerated blood vessels, their blood vessels are already so small it’s very hard to put them back together,” the doctor said.
“The artery that feeds the leg, the femoral artery, is only the thickness of a noodle in a small child. It’s very, very small. So repairing it and keeping the kid’s limb attached to them is very difficult,” he added.
Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina, also worked at the European Hospital and confirmed Sidhwa’s observations.
The surgeons’ testimonies reveal a grim situation where the youngest and most vulnerable suffer life-changing injuries from weapons designed for maximum impact.
“Amnesty International first identified ammunition packed with the metal cubes used in Spike missiles in Gaza in 2009,” the Guardian reported.
“They appear designed to cause maximum injury and, in some respects, seem to be a more sophisticated version of the ball-bearings or nails and bolts which armed groups often pack into crude rockets and suicide bombs,” Amnesty said in a report at the time, according to the paper.
Ongoing Genocide
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 38,345 Palestinians have been killed, and 88,295 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.
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Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Later in the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians began moving from the south to central Gaza in a constant search for safety.
(PC, Anadolu)
” Blood Libel ” …