Witnesses say Israel is using sniper drones in Gaza and they're shooting civilians
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Nizam Mahmood, a soft-spoken, retired transplant surgeon from England, spent August and September volunteering at Nasser Hospital in central Gaza. When we crossed the border, the first thing was really a complete sense of shock. That's Mahmood last week, testifying before the UK's Parliamentary International Development Committee.

see a landscape that looks as though it reminded me of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Devastation, buildings reduced to rubble for miles around as far as you can see. Nothing growing, no people. Dr. Mahmoud described the designated green zone. And a large part of it comprises of tents,

And when I say tents, some of those are proper tents. Many of them are just pieces of carpet and plastic stuck onto sticks. And these are in the middle of the road, side of the road, every possible space. There's no running water, no sanitation, no electricity, obviously.

At times overcome by emotion, the doctor spoke about what he heard. Well, the sound is mainly of two things. One is drones. So there's constant drones. The drones existed before October last year. It's been a feature of Palestinian life for some time. But now the drones inspire fear, I think, and they inspire fear.

He spoke about what he saw. He spoke about how those drones operated. I think the youngest...

And what that meant for the victims?

He came in with his stomach hanging out of his chest. He had an injury to his liver, spleen, bowel, arteries.

So quite extensive destruction from a single entry point. The drones firing those bullets are a new kind of weapon of war in the Israeli arsenal, one with a gun and a camera attached that can shoot remotely. People in Gaza refer to it as a quadcopter. This was day after day after day, operating on children who would say I was lying on the ground after a bomber dropped, and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me.

That's clearly a deliberate act, and it was a persistent act, persistent targeting of civilians. Consider this. For months, NPR has been collecting eyewitness accounts from Gaza that corroborate Dr. Mahmoud's testimony, saying the Israeli military has been using sniper drone technology and that they are not just shooting enemies, but also civilians. ♪♪

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It's Consider This from NPR. Dr. Nizam Mahmood told the UK Parliament that of all the conflicts he has worked in, including the Rwandan genocide, he has never seen anything like what is happening in Gaza. There just seems to be 1.4 million people trapped. They can't leave.

and having bombs dropped on them on a daily basis, and then drones coming in and shooting them. And there's plenty of evidence out there

NPR spoke to several eyewitnesses who have seen the destruction that these drones can cause. NPR's Kat Lonsdorff has been reporting from Tel Aviv, and she takes the story from here. A warning, this piece includes the sound of gunfire. 37-year-old Fatma Adama is a freelance journalist from Jabalia in northern Gaza. She's a journalist who works for the NPR.

It's an area that has been besieged by Israeli forces since early October. Adama sent NPR voice notes from her home there on October 9th. Hi, how are you? She starts. Israeli tanks are closing in, she says, and the army is nearby. Suddenly, she's interrupted.

Ah, hear that? She says, that's the quadcopter. It's what many in Gaza call the small hovering drone with a rifle mounted underneath. If I try to go closer to the door to get better service, she says, the quadcopter starts shooting and I have to go back inside. It's very dangerous. The whole town is under siege by the shooting quadcopter drones, she says. No one can move.

For months, NPR has collected accounts from more than a dozen people in Gaza who say they've seen these sniper drones and that they've seen them used to shoot and sometimes kill civilians. 55-year-old Adib Shakfa says he was walking with his 32-year-old son on May 31st in Rafah, in southern Gaza. Shakfa says it was a quiet day and there was no fighting nearby.

when suddenly a drone appeared and shot his son, who was walking up ahead. He says two men rushed in to help his son, and they were also shot. Two older women nearby were also shot in the head, he says. Shachfa says the women were killed. So was his son. The Israeli military told NPR it's unaware of this incident and that any suggestion that it intends to harm civilians is, quote, unfounded and baseless.

NPR also asked the Israeli military repeatedly if it was using the sniper drone technology in Gaza. It did not respond to the question.

Israel, frankly, like many militaries, is very cautious about what kinds of information it provides about its operations and tactics that it uses. Seth Jones is president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. But also makes it more difficult for everyday Israelis or journalists or other researchers to understand how

how these things are being used. Further complicating that understanding, until recently, Israel had a censorship law in place forbidding the media from reporting on armed drone use by the military. And it's something most journalists can't witness with their own eyes. Israel has not allowed outside journalists independent access to Gaza since the war began more than a year ago. But we do know that this sniper drone technology exists and that the Israeli military has it.

This is a video from 2018 by Duke Robotics Incorporated. For a small drone they call TCAD. The Future Soldier.

which can be outfitted with several different firearms. Robots are replacing combat soldiers. And shoot while it hovers, adjusting for the recoil of the weapon. The company is in the process of implementing orders from Israeli forces. Duke Robotics is based in Florida, in the U.S., but was established by veterans of several Israeli special forces units.

Around that same time, Israel's defense ministry released a video showing off new technology, including soldiers controlling one of Duke's sniper drones remotely and firing at targets at an outdoor shooting range. Then in 2021, Duke Robotics joined with an Israeli company, Elbit Systems, specifically to further develop the TCAD drone and market it globally. And there are other sniper drones on the market, too, also by Israeli companies.

In 2022, a company called Smart Shooter, based in northern Israel, announced a drone called Smash Dragon. In this YouTube video posted by the company, a small drone with a rifle barrel attached takes flight. The video then zooms in through the viewfinder to show the drone locking in on a human-shaped target before taking a shot.

SmartShooter denies that their Smash Dragon drone is being used by the Israeli military, but Israeli forces have touted using their technology in the past, and other products by the company are partially funded by Israel's Defense Ministry Research and Development. On SmartShooter's website, it says it uses artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to provide, quote, one-shot, one-hit performance.

precision. I would argue we're reaching a point where there are increasingly diminished human oversight over the practice of killing in war and also the decision-making process around

around who lives or dies. James Rogers is an expert on drone warfare and emerging technologies at Cornell University. He points out that precision can be good, but... No matter how precise your weapon systems are, if your intelligence is wrong, then all that precision, that guaranteed destruction of the target means, is the guaranteed death of the wrong person. The gunshot of the quadcopter has a special sound, has a special sound.

Dr. Ahmed Moghrabi is a head surgeon at Nasser Hospital in central Gaza. He says he's treated many people shot by the sniper quadcopter drone. They used to shoot at the displaced people inside the hospital and they killed many people actually. Back in early February, Nasser Hospital was a focus of the Israeli military, saying Hamas fighters were hiding there. On

On February 1st, Dr. Moghrabi says he and his co-worker, a male nurse, stepped out onto a balcony after finishing a long surgery. The quadcopter actually shot my nurse friend beside me. A drone shot the nurse in the chest. They shot the nurse. Dr. Moghrabi sent us a video he filmed that day. Colleagues rushed the nurse into an operating room as blood blooms around a bullet wound on his right chest.

Quickly, quickly, Dr. Moghrabi says, as others cut away the nurse's clothing to operate. The nurse survived. The Israeli military told NPR it was unaware of this incident as well.

Here are just a few of the other stories we heard. Several people we talked to in Beit Lehiya, in the north, described sniper drones recently shooting at civilians as they rushed to help pull people from the rubble after an Israeli airstrike leveled a building full of families. One man said a sniper drone entered his house with his family inside, started shooting, forcing them to flee. One doctor from the UK described sniper drones firing on people as they tried to enter a hospital in Gaza City, where he was working.

He told NPR he saw more than 20 injuries in one day from the drones, including one child shot in the neck who later died. Although there's been very little reporting on these drones, people in Gaza talk about them a lot. Most people we talked to brought up these attacks offhandedly. Sniper drones seem to have become so common in the war.

And as Seth Jones points out, once technology exists, it rarely goes away. The reality is, is this is an evolution in the character of war. So I don't think we're going to turn around and go the other direction. This might very well be the future of warfare.

That was NPR's Kat Lonsdorf. This episode was produced by Lauren Hodges and Brianna Scott. It was edited by James Heider and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

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