Crushed while alive: Palestinian civilians killed beneath tanks and bulldozers

In one of its most recent crimes, the Israeli regime brutally killed a Palestinian child.

After Israeli soldiers targeted a Palestinian child and prevented medical assistance from reaching him, a military bulldozer belonging to the occupying regime deliberately ran over him, tearing his body apart while he was still alive.

This deliberate killing demonstrates extreme brutality and is part of the Israeli regime’s ongoing pattern of targeting Palestinian civilians as a national group in the Gaza Strip during a two-year campaign of large-scale genocide.

According to human rights organizations, the child was wounded and bleeding before his painful death, and no one was able to reach him. Minutes later, a military bulldozer advanced toward him and deliberately ran him over while he was still alive on the ground.

The child’s uncle stated that the child, named Shamiya, was near the Jabalia Services Club, about 50 meters from the “yellow line,” when Israeli military vehicles approached the yellow concrete blocks.

Shamiya remained in the camp until one of his friends told him that the army had withdrawn from the yellow line. He then headed toward the concrete blocks with a group of friends. According to witnesses, when he reached the middle of al-Haddad Street, Israeli soldiers opened fire, and a bullet struck the child in the head.

The uncle added that Israeli soldiers then fired smoke grenades and advanced toward the area. The soldiers disembarked from their vehicles, and military bulldozers arrived to create an earth berm in front of the yellow concrete blocks. During this time, one of the bulldozers deliberately ran over Shamiya while he was lying on the ground, dismembering his body. The child’s friends later managed to collect the remains and transfer them to al-Shifa Hospital.

The repeated practice by the Israeli occupying army of running over Palestinians—whether alive or wounded—with tanks and bulldozers is not a series of isolated or accidental incidents. Rather, it is one of the most brutal forms of deliberate killing carried out over the past two years. It reflects an organized policy aimed at dehumanizing Palestinians and inflicting physical and psychological terror, an integral component of the genocide against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med Monitor) has also documented the killing of 62-year-old Palestinian Jamal Hamdi Hassan Ashour by the Israeli army. He was deliberately run over on February 29, 2024 (10 Esfand 1402) in the Zeitoun neighborhood.

Witnesses confirmed that soldiers detained him, tied his hands, interrogated him, and then ran him over with an armored vehicle—first crushing the lower half of his body and then the upper half.

Another grave crime was recorded on June 27, 2024 (7 Tir 1403), when Israeli soldiers targeted a family consisting of an elderly mother and her four children, including three daughters and a grandchild who was only 18 months old, in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza City.

The occupiers attacked the home, fired live ammunition and grenades inside, and forced the family out. They then detained the wounded family members for more than three hours in an active combat zone in and around tanks, using them as human shields. Subsequently, a tank ran over the 65-year-old mother, Safiya Hassan Mousa al-Jamal, while she was still alive and in front of her son, killing her in a horrific manner.

Euro-Med Monitor also documented, on January 23, 2024 (3 Bahman 1402), a tank attack by the Israeli regime on a gathering of displaced persons in the Taybeh Towers area of Khan Younis. The attack killed the father and eldest daughter of a family and wounded the mother and three other children.

On December 16, 2023 (25 Azar 1402), Israeli tanks and bulldozers ran over displaced people sheltering in tents in the courtyard of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, killing several people, including wounded patients receiving treatment. These machines also crushed graves and bodies that had been buried on one side of the courtyard.

The killing of Palestinians by running them over with heavy military machinery is among the most brutal methods employed by the occupying army and reflects a complete disregard for human life and dignity. This pattern indicates an effort to destroy Palestinians as a national group in Gaza, reinforced by repeated public incitement to annihilate them and by the impunity enjoyed by perpetrators in the absence of any real avenues for accountability at all levels.

Despite a ceasefire agreement reached on October 10, 2025 (18 Mehr), the Israeli regime continues to kill Palestinian civilians through aerial and artillery bombardment and direct gunfire.

This ongoing killing is accompanied by the deliberate maintenance of deadly living conditions for hundreds of thousands of displaced people, including obstruction of the entry of life-saving aid and essential supplies, prevention of reconstruction, and exposure of people to cold weather, disease, and the collapse of health services. Taken together, these actions reflect a policy aimed at the complete or partial destruction of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip.

Human rights experts say that the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) must give special priority to investigating the mass killings and targeting of the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip—including the killing of children, the wounded, and displaced persons, 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 move toward establishing individual criminal responsibility at the highest military and political levels.