Headless Children: Volunteer Gaza Doctor Testifies to Nature of Injuries
Dr. Mohammed Mustafa, a Perth-based emergency physician who volunteered in Gaza, gave testimony in July 2025 describing handing mothers the headless bodies of their children in body bags — describing injuries he said were inconsistent with incidental civilian casualties in military operations.
In July 2025, Dr. Mohammed Mustafa, a surgeon working in Gaza, gave testimony about the injuries he treated and the experience of informing families of their children's deaths. His account was recorded and widely shared on social media.
“I'm putting headless children and I'm handing them over to mothers and they're hugging them and they're putting them into body bags”
Dr. Mustafa described the nature of injuries he witnessed as indicative of munitions and targeting patterns inconsistent with the incidental civilian harm that accompanies legitimate military operations. In the recorded interview he said he treated children as young as two who had been shot in the head multiple times, and alleged that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians.
His testimony is consistent with accounts from other foreign and Palestinian surgeons who worked in Gaza throughout the conflict, including Dr. Nick Maynard and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa.
The IDF has not specifically responded to Dr. Mustafa's testimony. Several claims in the transcript are unrated assertions; for example, on the 15 Rafah medics killed in March 2025, the IDF acknowledged "professional errors" and dismissed a deputy commander, but no investigation has found they were buried alive. The military's general position is that civilian casualties result from the inherent difficulty of urban combat against an enemy that embeds within and beneath civilian structures — not from deliberate targeting of non-combatants.
Transcript
I don't want to put you on the spot, but, you know, I remember when I was in Gaza and I would watch some of, you know, your debates and you were saying that you were having a moral quandary over what was going on and I remember just thinking to myself like it's not a moral quandary for me and it's not a moral quandary for millions of people around the world like we're sat here and I'm putting headless children and I'm handing them over to mothers and they're hugging them and they're putting them into body bags when we have a mass casualty event I'm stepping over children as they're bleeding out to death on the floor because I know we don't have the medical equipment to treat them
when I'm trying to use an ultrasound machine to do a scan on someone the cords have been cut because Israeli soldiers have cut the cords of ultrasound machines
I've had family members who have died because the dialysis machines are filled with bullet holes
so, you know, just to put it in a context, the first 24 days of this conflict, 1,900 children were killed in the first 24 days
more than any other conflict anywhere around the world in a whole year and in women and children are being funneled into cages and gunned down hungry women and children
you can't have an army that's on trial for genocide to be also the one that controls access to them
Do you believe the IDF are deliberately killing civilians?
Because they always say we're deliberately killing her mass and civilians are dying in the process of us going after her mass, what do you say to that?
You know, they killed their own hostages with a noir waving white flags
they have bombed hospitals with people inside them
they left babies and incubators to what to death
when they executed those 15 paramedics, I was in Gaza then
when they executed 15 paramedics and married them alive
and lied about it
and lied about it
I was there when I would have children coming in with explosive injuries
and they would have bread in their hand, they were eating and they targeted them when they were eating
I would pick up children as young as 2 years old that had been shot in their head by snipers multiple times
so when they talk about saying that they're only going after her mass, I mean you said it yourself
they've openly talked about ethnic cleansing the whole of Gaza
they're actively expanding settlements in the West Bank
