Foreign surgeons in the Gaza Strip report numerous critical injuries in Palestinian children caused by Israeli fragmentation weapons.

Six volunteer doctors who worked at Gaza's European and al-Aqsa hospitals over the past three months said that a majority of their operations involved children struck by small pieces of shrapnel. These fragments create minimal entry wounds but cause extensive internal damage.

Speaking to The Guardian on Thursday, the doctors highlighted that Israeli fragmentation bombs, designed to scatter shrapnel, are responsible for high rates of deaths and amputations among Gaza's children.

A trauma surgeon from California, Feroze Sidhwa, who worked at the European hospital in April, described encountering "splinter injuries." 

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He added, "About half of the injuries I took care of were in young kids. We saw a lot of so-called splinter injuries that were very, very small to the point that you easily missed them while examining a patient. Much, much smaller than anything I’ve seen before but they caused tremendous damage on the inside."

"Children are more vulnerable to any penetrating injury because they have smaller bodies. Their vital parts are smaller and easier to disrupt... The artery that feeds the leg, the femoral artery, is only the thickness of a noodle in a small child. It’s very, very small. So repairing it and keeping the kid’s limb attached to them is very difficult."

'Many lost their limbs'

An orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina, Mark Perlmutter, noted that children struck by fragmentation shards often succumbed to their injuries, and many survivors faced limb amputations.

"X-rays showed demolished bones with a pinhole wound on one side, a pinhole on the other, and a bone that looks like a tractor trailer drove over it. The children we operated on, most of them had these small entrance and exit points," noted Perlmutter, who had worked at the European hospital.

He added that most of the children who survived suffered from neurologic and vascular injuries, major causes for amputation. Perlmutter explained that when blood vessels or nerves are injured, the affected limb can deteriorate within 24 hours.

The Guardian interviewed explosives experts who examined photos of the shrapnel recovered by medical personnel and reviewed descriptions of the wounds treated by doctors. They confirmed that the accounts matched the characteristics of bombs equipped with "fragmentation sleeves," as used by the Israeli military.

Amnesty International initially documented the Israeli army’s use of fragmentation bombs during the 2009 Gaza war, describing these explosives as designed to inflict maximum injury.

The Gaza Health Ministry announced on Thursday that the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli occupation in Gaza since October 7 has risen to 38,345 martyrs, with 88,295 injured.