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 Shamia remained in the camp until a friend told him that the army had withdrawn from the Yellow Line.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.
One of the bulldozers deliberately ran over Zaher’s body as he lay on the ground, tearing it into pieces
Zaher Shamia’s uncle
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, in the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood east of Gaza City. The forces stormed the house, firing live ammunition and grenades inside and forcing the family out. They then detained the injured family members in and around tanks for more than three hours in an active combat zone, using them as human shields. A tank subsequently ran over the mother, 65-year-old Safiya Hassan Musa al Jamal, while she was still alive and in front of her son, killing her in a particularly brutal manner.
On 23 January 2024, Euro-Med Monitor documented an Israeli tank running over a temporary shelter caravan in the Tayba Towers area of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, while members of the Ghannam family were sleeping inside. The attack killed the father and his eldest daughter and injured his wife and three other children.
On 16 December 2023, Israeli tanks and bulldozers ran over displaced people sheltering in tents in the courtyard of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, killing several individuals, including wounded patients receiving treatment. The machinery also crushed graves, and the bodies of people buried in one side of the courtyard.
Killing Palestinians by running them over with heavy military machinery is among the most brutal methods used by the Israeli army, showing complete disregard for their lives and dignity. This pattern reflects an attempt to destroy Palestinians as a national group in Gaza, reinforced by repeated public incitement to exterminate them and by the impunity enjoyed by perpetrators in the absence of any genuine avenues for accountability at all levels.
Despite the ceasefire agreement of 10 October 2025, Israel continues to kill Palestinian civilians through aerial and artillery bombardment and direct gunfire, resulting in 389 civilian deaths and about 1,000 injuries since the agreement took effect. This pattern forms one dimension of the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
This continued killing is accompanied by the deliberate maintenance of deadly living conditions for hundreds of thousands of displaced people, including obstructing the entry of aid and basic lifesaving supplies, blocking reconstruction, and leaving people exposed to cold weather, disease, and collapsing health services. Together, these actions reflect a policy aimed at destroying the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip, in whole or in part.
The Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court must give special priority to investigating the widespread killing and targeting of the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip, including the killing of children, the wounded, and the displaced, as well as the imposition of deadly living conditions, as part of the crime of genocide and other crimes within the Court’s jurisdiction. It must also advance towards determining individual responsibility at the highest military and political levels.
States that recognise universal jurisdiction must open criminal investigations into the documented incidents of vehicular attacks, deliberate killings, and other serious violations against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and prosecute all those for whom sufficient evidence of responsibility exists, regardless of their nationality or official position.
States Parties to the Genocide Convention, as well as other influential states, must take concrete and immediate steps to prevent the continuation of genocide in Gaza, including halting the supply of weapons and military support to Israel that are used to commit violations, and reviewing existing political and security cooperation in line with their obligation to prevent, and not contribute to, genocide.
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