Kids Under Fire: An investigation into Israeli soldiers shooting children | Fault Lines Documentary

Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:
It’s hard to imagine a child playing one day and then not existing the next day.
Reporter (Josh Rushing):
Since the war began in 2023, healthcare workers have been some of the only people permitted to enter Gaza. Israel has not allowed foreign reporters independent access.
Dr. Mohammed Adeel Khaleel:
It was like an apocalyptic movie. I mean it really didn’t seem real. I’ve been to Gaza a couple times this past year.
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:
It crushes you on the inside.
Reporter:
Fault Lines interviewed American doctors around the country about their experiences volunteering in hospitals in Gaza.
Dr. Mark Perlmutter:
Thousands of children are being mutilated.
Dr. Nabeel Rana:
Every day, every day. There wasn’t a single day that we didn’t see kids in the emergency room, and the operating room, in the morgue.
Reporter:
Even though these doctors served in different hospitals at different times, they all witnessed a disturbing pattern.
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:
More and more I started to see children with penetrating injuries like gunshot wounds.
Dr. Mohammed Adeel Khaleel:
Gunshot came from out of nowhere. Your kid was just playing on the playground and got shot.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
It seemed like every day we had at least a child coming in with a gunshot wound.
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:
At some point I thought, God this just can’t be. There has to be a mistake.
Dr. Mohammed Adeel Khaleel:
Most of the time you have a gunshot wound in the head, these seem to targeted.
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:
After 5, 6, 7, 8, I came to the realization that oh somebody is shooting children.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
[Washington State]
It was August 24th. It was morning and it was during a mass casualty incident. A little girl who was 4 years old, whose name is Mira. She was brought by her parents. She had a single wound to her head. I was able to get her into the CT scan. On a CT scan we saw a bullet in this child’s head in her brain.
[presenting the scan]
Reporter:
Dr. Mimi Syed treated 4-year-old Mira during her first trip to Gaza in August 2024.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
This is where the bullet entered. See how it takes that path from there. And it’s lodged right there, into the back.
Reporter:
What’s the prognosis here when you’re looking at this?
Dr. Mimi Syed:
Patients with wounds to the head or brain matter out. We can’t do anything for them. So she was designated as someone we couldn’t save.
Mohammed Al-Darini, Mira’s father [Arabic]:
This is the bullet that ruined my daughter’s life. And it represents that awful day when it all happened. There were a lot of quadcopters in the area. If a bullet hits you, then goodbye, you’re dead.
Israa Haboush, Mira’s mother [Arabic]:
On August 24, around 8AM, we were just waking up. It was her older sister’s birthday. They were happy, and said ‘get up Mama. Let’s make cake for Rahaf’s birthday’. People were running outside because of gunfire from quadcopters. People were afraid and panicked. Suddenly, Mira’s entire face was covered in blood. And we knew our daughter had been shot in the head.
Mohammed Al-Darini, Mira’s father [Arabic]:
She was hit here, at the front of her head.
Reporter:
Witnesses told as that Mira was shot by an Israeli drone, or quadcopter armed with a gun. While these drones are known to exist, confirming their use in Gaza has been difficult despite dozens of reported incidents.
Israa Haboush, Mira’s mother [Arabic]:
In that moment I felt like life stopped. How could it be Mira? I’m going to lose Mira? Mira is my daughter. She is my soul. I didn’t know what to do. Do I yell or cry or carry my daughter?
Mohammed Al-Darini, Mira’s father [Arabic]:
I carried her like this, and I started running with her, calling for help. ‘people, save us. Somebody, please help us. Just a car’.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
She was moving very little, clearly injured.
Reporter:
Had someone triaged Mira before you saw her?
Dr. Mimi Syed:
Some physicians had already seen her. I started to examine her and one of my colleagues came and said, no, don’t waste your time. But what I noticed about her was she was still moving. I felt like I could still save her.
Reporter:
What did you do?
Dr. Mimi Syed:
So I intubated her. It’s a small hand-held blade that kind of goes into the mouth and then you put a plastic tube inside and you can breathe for them as a result of that.
– [Arabic]: The bullet was removed from the recesses of her brain in the back. They removed it and placed a tube to block the brain fluids from leaking.
Reporter:
This was Mira’s second brush with death. Last year, as our family fled south an Israeli missile fired on them, killing one of our aunts. Another aunt lost her leg.
Mohammed Al-Darini, Mira’s father [Arabic]:
I can’t lie to you and say I wasn’t scared. She was between life and death.
Dr Mark Perlmutter:
The target at the end of a scope, it’s unmistakable that they are a young human being. And when that trigger gets pulled on that target, it is not by accident. At all, ever.
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:
Children are easy targets, right? They are generally defenseless. It makes sense to target children if you’re trying to target the future.
[We] spoke to 20 American doctors who volunteered in hospitals across Gaza since the war began. They all reported treating children with gunshots, often fatal.
Dr Mark Perlmutter:
It’s not a rogue soldier that lost their ethics. It’s widespread throughout the entire Gaza Strip. There’s a definitive pattern of Israeli soldiers targeting quite specifically children.
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:
I didn’t want to believe that children were being shot. Nobody wants to think that other humans are capable of annihilating children in that way.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
I had 18 cases of children with shots to the head. When you see one or two coming in. in that time that I was there, then I could say maybe it’s an accident. It’s crossfire. But when you see that a child is being shot in the head every day, multiple times, in the abdomen, in the chest, those are intentional. Someone is doing that.
Reporter:
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, children make up over a third of the death toll in Gaza. Nearly 16,000 have been killed, mostly by bombing. Doctors say it’s impossible to know how many were shot since Gaza’s healthcare system has been destroyed by this Israeli military.
Miranda Cleland:
Israeli forces have killed so many children in Gaza that is most likely we will never know all of their names.
Reporter:
Al-Jazeera has been tracking incidents of children shot by the Israeli military. In one case, Israeli soldiers fired at three-year-old Emad Abu Al-Qare’a and his two cousins on their way back from buying fruit. One cousin, Hadeel, who was 20, died immediately. But Emad still showed signs of life. As neighbors tried to drag him from the street, Israeli soldiers continued to fire. His other cousin, Aya, survived.
Aya Abu Al-Qare’a [Arabic]:
We came under fire again and I ran and they fired at Hadeel. She was killed and fell to the ground with Emad. He was moving before he died and he was calling on to us and he was looking at people.
Fawda Al-Da’Our [Arabic]:
A little boy, who was three and a half years old. He went out just because he heard there were clementines, and he wanted to eat a clementine. When my son extended his hand and tried to move, they executed him with their bullets.
Reporter:
In another case, Israeli soldiers shot 13-year-old Nahedh Barbakh and his older brother, Rames, outside their home in Khan Yunis. The family was trying to evacuate south. Nahedh was first shot in the leg. He was trying to get up, Israeli soldiers shot him twice more in the back and in the neck. He was holding a white flag. When Ramez went to help him, he was shot in the heart.
Islam Barbakh, their mother:
I was hysterical. That is, I just wanted my sons back. Maybe they still had breath in them. I kept hoping that if an ambulance came they were still alive, maybe we could save them. He was bleeding like a fountain, from the side, neck, and leg. Then he collapsed and succumbed to death, immediately.
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:
You kind of want to scream at the top of your lungs about it to everyone.
Dr. Ayaz Pathan:
I know that to some degree I’m complicit in that, right? I’m in this country, these are government officials that are making these decisions that we as a people have elected, I pay tax dollars.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
How could you watch this and let it go on? How could you not say something? In what world is it okay to shoot a child in the head? If I can’t speak up for something like this, what good am I?
[Washington D.C. 28.1.25]
Reporter:
The United States is Israel’s largest military backer. For months American doctors returning from Gaza warned that children were being shot, yet U.S. support persisted. In January, some of the doctors traveled to Washington, DC to urge lawmakers to take action.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
It’s very difficult just to acknowledge that I live in this country that’s supplying the bombs or the guns or the ammunition for that bullet that was in Mira’s head.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
This I want to show you is a little girl I treated. She’s a four-year-old named Mira. She got shot at a quadcopter sniper. This is Mira. She’s a four-year-old little girl. She was shot in the head.
The meeting seemed very rushed, like we’re just trying to say what we’re there to say and then just leave.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
This is Mira. She’s a four-year-old little girl. She got shot. She feels very futile. I feel like I’m not doing anything good.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
I thought that they would be shocked to learn some of the things that we were seeing. Just seeing a child with a bullet in their head is a powerful, shocking thing to see. But it almost seemed like it wasn’t new information.
They say a bunch of non-substantial stuff. And it’s just like stuff.
I was met with some skepticism about the actual bullet and it being authentic. Yeah. I touched her. I saved her. My hands treated her. I held her in my arms when I went back last time and for them to question that that really happened is – it breaks my heart.
Reporter:
When you tell a US lawmaker that you’re seeing a pattern, what’s their response?
Dr. Mimi Syed:
They shrug their shoulders or you know, shake their head. But nothing substantial. A child should not be arriving with a bullet in their head. If that happened in the US, there would be law enforcement agencies all over the hospital. This is a regular occurrence in Gaza.
Dr. Mark Perlmutter:
When I have to step over, eight dead babies to look for the ones that have a chance to survive.
Miranda Cleland:
We have more than two decades of evidence pointing to that this is a regular occurrence. And Israeli soldiers are never, ever held accountable. And so if they’ve been allowed to kill children with complete impunity, then it’s absolutely not surprising that they would carry out these actions and attacks in Gaza. It’s just the same as they have been doing in the West Bank.
Reporter:
Have you ever thought through, what’s the strategic reason to shoot a child? The message should we take from a military that would target children?
Miranda Cleland:
I’ve thought about it a lot. And the only conclusion I can come to is Israeli soldiers are shooting Palestinian children because they want to. And I think they do it because they’ve been allowed to and nobody has stopped them.
Reporter:
Is it a war crime to intentionally target a child?
Miranda Cleland:
Yes. Hurting a child with lethal force, whether it’s a living munition, a drone strike, any other type of targeted attack is absolutely a war crime.
Reporter:
Not only is it a war crime, but it’s also against U.S. law to provide support to foreign military units accused of human rights violations. It’s known as the Leahy Law. After Senator Patrick Leahy who sponsored it.
Tim Rieser:
I worked for Senator Patrick Leahy.
Reporter:
His senior advisor Tim Rieser drafted the law.
Tim Rieser:
There’s probably not a unit in the Israeli army that either hasn’t been trained and or received equipment from the United States. But it is the only country they’re aware of that the law has been so consistently not applied to.
Reporter:
Has it ever been applied to Israel?
Tim Rieser:
Not that we’re aware of. Had the Leahy Law from its inception been applied as it was intended in the West Bank and Gaza, then you would think as in this country and in every country that it would help to prevent those types of crimes from occurring because people would know that they could be held accountable.
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:
I took care of a 19-month-old child who was shot in the thigh while she was playing outside of her tent. I took care of a nine-year-old boy who was shot in the right buttock while he was walking next to his tent. I did take care of a child who was brought in dead on arrival who was shot once in the left side of the chest, so through and through to the heart.
Dr. Yassar Arain:
I went to the neonatal ICU in the morning and they took me to a room where a mother was holding her baby and they said this baby was shot and I was like, what do you mean this baby was shot? The mother was breastfeeding must’ve been a quadcopter, came and shot baby [in] the head and that the bullet went in one side and went out the other side.
Dr. Mark Perlmutter:
Kids that were being shot, it’s every day.
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:
Most of them were under the age of 10.
Reporter:
Would a pattern of children shot in the head of chest qualify for the Leahy Law or would you need to know each child’s situation in case?
Tim Rieser:
Any one of those cases could be a basis for triggering the Leahy Law and if there’s a pattern then that’s all the more persuasive. That this is not just some random mistake. It’s rather a result of a culture in which those committing those crimes have no fear of being held accountable.
Reporter:
Israeli soldiers also operate in a culture where violence against Palestinians is not only overlooked but often condoned by prominent politicians.
Politician Mairav Ben-Ari [Hebrew]:
The children in Gaza brought this upon themselves!
Politician Keti Shitrit [Hebrew]:
I do not make a distinction between the terrorist murderers and the civilian population in Gaza. It’s the same thing, as far as I’m concerned. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no difference.
Reporter:
This impunity is further supported by loopholes in US aid to Israel.
Charles Blaha:
Israel’s different.
Reporter:
Charles Blaha led a State Department Office responsible for vetting thousands of allegations of human rights violations by foreign military units receiving US funding.
Charles Blaha:
So there is a special Leahy vetting process for Israel.
Reporter: Of countries receiving vast US assistance only Israel has a separate vetting process that Israel Leahy vetting formed. Unlike others Blaha says the US accepts Israel’s investigations without question. With final Leahy decisions made at the highest levels including the Secretary of State.
Reporter:
Why do we have this form for this one country?
Blaha:
Because Israel receives assistance that’s untraceable. It’s a very elaborate, Byzantine, complicated, delay-ridden, high-level process that has been at fault for the State Department never finding a single Israeli unit had ever committed a gross violation of human rights. I signed off on that. I signed off for two reasons. I believed at the time that the State Department would implement that process in good faith. And I believed at the time in the Israeli military justice system. Both of those beliefs turned out to be incorrect.
Reporter:
So you’ve gone 180 degrees on two major beliefs that are consequential in a lot of people’s lives. How does that sit with you?
Blaha:
I don’t really know what to say. If I’d objected at the time, I certainly would have been overridden, but my name wouldn’t be on the approval line. I was mistaken. I was wrong.
Reporter:
A cynic from the outside would see the vetting form as Byzantine by design. The purpose and the point of this was to offer obfuscation for the Israeli forces to do what they want and not be hassled by U.S. laws.
Blaha:
I recognized at the time that it was very, very complicated, but I believed it would be implemented in good faith. I didn’t think it would come to this. These thousands and thousands of deaths.
Reporter:
Against all odds, Mira lived.
Israa Haboush, Mira’s mother [Arabic]:
You’re a strong girl, Mira, right? You put up with all this pain. And you were a good girl and now you are doing better, right?
Reporter:
When Dr. Syed went back to Gaza in December, Mira was regaining her ability to walk.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
Last time I saw her, she wasn’t even opening here eyes. She was basically laying there after she was extubated.
Mira [Arabic]:
I painted my nails.
Israa Haboush, Mira’s mother [Arabic]:
She’s telling you she painted her nails.
Mira [Arabic]:
I love you too.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
She’s talking normally, all normal like before. Standing. Walking.
Reporter:
As Mira gets older, she will need additional surgeries, but she won’t be able to get them in Gaza.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
Still swollen.
Reporter:
Days after Dr. Syed left Gaza, Mira’s family survived a third attack. She was getting physical therapy when an Israeli bomb hit the building next door.
Mohammed Al-Darini, Mira’s father [Arabic]:
Of course, after getting shot in the head, my daughter would be injured again? For me, that’s when I would have just gone crazy.
Reporter:
Mira was spared, but her mother, Israa, was severely injured. She lost her leg.
Israa Haboush, Mira’s mother [Arabic]:
My life is not going to be like it was before. I need to be stronger than I am right now, I need to stop being in despair. But I try to support her as much as possible, mentally, despite my own tragedy and pain.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
I was at my daughter’s award ceremony this morning, and I was in a room full of small children, and they were celebrating their teeth, who lost a tooth today. Suddenly, I just thought this picture. I had a child in my last mission, whose name was Sammy, and his face, his entire face, was blown off. And I was holding his teeth, his mandible in my hand. And I just couldn’t help thinking, like, how could this be the same planet?
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:
If I was the only one who said, hey, I’ve seen children shot in the head, it’s very easy to dismiss. If 40 other healthcare workers are saying the same thing, that’s a body of evidence that’s incontrovertible.
Dr. Yassar Arain:
In Gaza, I saw the concept of innocence of children or protection of children was purposely destroyed, with intent.
Dr. Ayaz Pathan:
There will be some children that are broken, and will forever be broken.
Dr. Nabeel Rana:
You’re wiping out a certain number, you’re maming a certain number, and you’re permanently, mentally, emotionally disabling the rest. And that’s going to be passed down to the next generation. So this is how you cripple a society.
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:
They say that Gaza is the graveyard of human rights. And for me, it was really the graveyard of my belief in the human race being able to challenge its worst impulses. I don’t know that I can ever get that back.
Dr. Mimi Syed:
If this was your child, would you want the world to turn their back on you? Would you want people to look away? And these kids that I left behind, they’re continuing to be threatened with death all the time.
[Closing title cards]
We presented the Israeli military’s press office with the stories of Mira, Imad, Hadeel, Ramez and Nahedh. We also asked them whether any soldiers have been investigated for shooting children. They chose not to respond.

Mira’s family hoped she can be evacuated out of Gaza for medical treatment