'I've never been in a conflict area where medical aid is restricted to that extent...If all of that didn't happen, then tens of thousands of lives would be saved,' says Nizam Mamode
A British surgeon who worked for a month in Gaza said Tuesday that he saw a number of children with bullet wounds to the head after they were "deliberately targeted" by Israeli snipers.
"It doesn't matter who you are in Gaza. If you're Palestinian, you're a target," Nizam Mamode said during a session of the International Development Committee in Britain's House of Commons on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Giving evidence in his testimony, Mamode, who worked at Nasser Hospital in Gaza from mid-August to mid-September, said that 60% to 70% of the people who they treated in Gaza were women and children.
Asked about his experience with injured women and children, he cited the head wounds from snipers.
"We saw a number of children with sniper injuries to the head, a single shot to the head. No other injuries. So clearly, they were deliberately targeted by Israeli snipers, and yeah, that was day after day," he noted.
The surgeon, who has worked in a number of dangerous conflict zones, highlighted that he had never seen anything on the scale of what he saw in Gaza.
"I've worked in a number of conflict zones in different parts of the world. I was there at the time of the Rwandan genocide. I've never seen anything on this scale, ever,” he said.
"I've never been in a conflict area where medical aid has been restricted to that extent...It's not allowing supplies in, bombing health care facilities, attacking ambulances, killing health care workers."
"If all of that didn't happen, then tens of thousands of lives would be saved," he added.
Mamode said that any army that is engaged in a war has a responsibility to the civilian population on both sides, adding he is seeing the opposite in the Gaza Strip.
- 'Difficult to find another word' than genocide
Asked whether he regards what he saw as a genocide, Mamode said it is "difficult to find another word for it, given what we've seen. And I certainly think that the Palestinian people feel that's what's happening to them and there's a sense of resignation that they're all just waiting to die with no chance of escape. So in a word, yes."
He was then asked about the Israeli army's claims that they are dropping leaflets warning people to move to different areas before targeting the locations.
Mamode replied that most of their casualties were coming from the Green Zone, which supposedly should not be targeted, and many of them had no evacuation, no warning at all.
"We had a vehicle blown up five meters from the emergency department in the main street. We certainly didn't get any warning. And if I'd been crossing the road to buy something, that would have been the end of me," he added.
He said that guesthouses which were designated as safe houses were also targeted by Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip.
"The aim behind it is to discourage aid workers from coming, and I think it's the same as the shooting at the UN convoys in terms of attacking hospitals and ambulances and so on."
He noted that what is happening in Gaza "cannot be anything other than collective punishment," a consistent attempt to essentially wipe out a large part of the population.
The session came as the deadline approached for Israel to ensure that more aid enters Gaza or face potential cuts in military assistance from the US.
- 'UK needs to take seriously prospect of IHL'
Following the session, Sarah Champion, the chair of the committee, said the examples Mamode gave were "profound and deeply chilling."
"On this evidence, the UK needs to take seriously the prospect of international humanitarian law having been egregiously broken in Gaza," she added.
Citing Mamode's testimony about children who were shot by drones, Champion also recalled him saying that he was aware of five armored UN convoys that used to travel into and out of Gaza which were shot at by Israeli forces.
"But the conflict's devastating direct impact on the population is just the tip of the iceberg," she noted.
"The committee will do all we can to act on Professor Mamode's extraordinary testimony and ensure that his experiences are heard loud and clear. If leaders are not yet listening, they should be by now," she added.
Israel has continued a devastating offensive on Gaza since an attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas in October 2023, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.
Nearly 43,700 people have since been killed in Gaza, mostly women and children, and over 103,000 others injured, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its deadly war on Gaza.
