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| Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization |
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| Zaher Nasser Shamia, 16, from Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip. (Social Media) |
Israeli bulldozer crushing of a wounded child exemplifies horrific killing pattern in Gaza
11 Dec 2025
Palestinian Territory – An Israeli military bulldozer deliberately ran over a wounded Palestinian child, cutting his body in half while he was still alive, after shooting him and preventing medical aid from reaching him. This premeditated killing reflects extreme brutality and forms part of Israel’s ongoing pattern of targeting Palestinian civilians as a national group in the Gaza Strip within the broader two-year-long genocide.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor’s field team documented the injury of 16-year-old Zaher Nasser Shamia from Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip by Israeli forces on Wednesday afternoon, 10 December 2025. The wounded child lay bleeding, with no one able to reach him due to continuous gunfire. Minutes later, a military bulldozer advanced towards him and deliberately ran him over while he was still alive on the ground, splitting his body in two and tearing it into pieces.
In his testimony to Euro-Med Monitor, the child’s uncle said that Shamia had been near the Jabalia Services Club, about 50 metres from the Yellow Line, when Israeli army vehicles arrived at around 9 a.m. near the yellow concrete cubes amid heavy gunfire. Shamia remained in the camp until a friend told him that the army had withdrawn from the Yellow Line. He then walked with a group of friends towards the concrete cubes. As he reached the middle of al-Hadad Street, Israeli forces fired at him, most likely from a quadcopter drone, striking him in the head, according to eyewitnesses. He was seen still moving his head before his friends fled, leaving him lying on the ground.
The child’s uncle added that Israeli forces then fired smoke bombs and advanced towards Zaher’s location. Soldiers dismounted, and military bulldozers arrived to erect a berm in front of the yellow cement blocks. During this time, one of the bulldozers deliberately ran over Zaher’s body as he lay on the ground, tearing it into pieces. His friends were later able to collect the remains and transfer them to Al-Shifa Hospital.
The Israeli army’s repeated practice of running over Palestinians, whether alive or wounded, with tanks and bulldozers, is not a series of isolated incidents but one of the most brutal forms of deliberate killing carried out over the past two years. This reflects an organised policy to dehumanise Palestinians and inflict physical and psychological terror, forming an integral element of the genocide committed against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip.
Euro-Med Monitor also documented the Israeli army’s killing of 62-year-old Palestinian Jamal Hamdi Hassan Ashour, who was deliberately run over in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, southeast of Gaza City, on 29 February 2024. Testimonies confirmed that soldiers arrested him, zip-tied his hands, and interrogated him before running him over with an armoured vehicle, crushing first the lower half of his body and then the upper half.
Another compound crime was documented on 27 June 2024, when Israeli forces targeted a family consisting of an elderly mother and her four children, including three daughters and a granddaughter barely a year and a half old... READ MORE https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6942/Israeli-bulldozer-crushing-of-a-wounded-child-exemplifies-horrific-killing-pattern-in-Gaza