A small girl lies lifeless next to her father on a street in Gaza City. The father stretches out his arm to touch his dead daughter. It becomes the last thing he does in life.
The incident was captured by mobile cameras and published in December 2023. Now it is part of the investigation, which is based on interviews with doctors, documentation from healthcare and includes a total of 168 cases where children have been shot in Gaza. In 95 of these, the children, two-thirds of whom were under the age of twelve, were shot in either the head or chest.
Shot in humanitarian zones
The BBC has mapped the cases through direct witness statements or via aid organizations to get a picture of the course of events.
The informants point out the Israeli military as responsible for the shooting on 57 occasions. In two cases, Palestinians are pointed out, one in connection with shots being fired during a celebration and the other during a gang confrontation. In the remaining 36 cases, it has not been possible to determine the circumstances.
The mapping includes events from the beginning of the war, which began after the Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023, until July this year. Some of the shootings took place in active war zones, while others took place in humanitarian areas designated by Israel.
Regarding the case of the girl and the father in Gaza City, the BBC was able to identify the street through geolocation and could then identify the two through death certificates. In an interview with the British public service company, a sister of the deceased girl says that the family that day had been ordered by the Israeli military to evacuate and that there were no battles going on in the area.
Surgeon: "Lost count"
At a crossroads, they saw a tank a bit away, whereupon they started running. When they turned around, they saw that the father and the younger sister were lying on the ground, shot. Satellite images from the site that the BBC has reviewed show that Israel had a military presence in the area at the time and that a tank was on the street a few hours before the shooting.
British surgeon Nizam Mamode spent a month within Gaza's healthcare in 2024 and tells the BBC that he "lost count" of how many children with gunshot wounds came in during that period.
The Israeli military states in a statement to the BBC that the case of the girl and the father in Gaza City will be "investigated by the relevant authorities" and adds that people can "be injured unintentionally or incorrectly during hostilities".
