How Israeli drones track and deliberately kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza
At least 60 Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli quadcopters since the October 2025 “ceasefire,” including children, displaced people, farmers, and shepherds.
The Israelis have been deliberately terrorising and killing Palestinian civilians, including children, with quadcopter drones since the so-called ceasefire of last October, a new report has revealed in grim detail.
The report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that it had “documented the killing of at least 60 civilians by gunfire from these drones or by munitions dropped by them since the ceasefire took effect on 10 October 2025 through early September 2026.”
It added that the “targeting of children, displaced people, farmers, shepherds, and people returning to check on their home, reveals a continuing pattern of the deliberate killing of Palestinian civilians.”
‘They see them, then kill them’
The report highlighted that quadcopters are equipped with technology that enables their operators “to closely monitor individuals, track their movements, and then fire at them or drop munitions toward them with a high degree of accuracy.”
“This greatly narrows the margin for error in target identification and heightens the obligation to refrain from an attack when the civilian nature of the target becomes apparent or when there is any doubt as to their status,” it added.
“The repeated killing of children, displaced people, farmers, and shepherds by direct gunfire or munitions dropped from these drones, despite their clear civilian status and absence of any direct participation in hostilities or imminent threat, therefore provides, taken together, strong evidence that civilians themselves were intentionally selected as targets of attack, rather than being killed as a result of mistaken identification or accidentally struck. Such attacks are prohibited in themselves and cannot be justified by military necessity or subjected to a proportionality assessment, since a direct attack against a civilian is prohibited from the outset and cannot be made lawful by invoking military necessity or the rules of proportionality.”
60 recorded killings
The data collected by Euro-Med Monitor showed that at least 60 civilians had been killed in attacks carried out by Israeli quadcopters since the “ceasefire.”
The Israelis have killed at least 1,372 Palestinians since the fraudulent “ceasefire,” using various means, including airstrikes, sniper fire, and drone attacks. The Jewish state has also mobilised several militias — which operate east of the so-called yellow line under its protection and with its funding — to kidnap and kill Palestinians.
Among the victims of direct firing by quadcopters is 12-year-old Abdullah Nour Saeed Dawas, who was killed on April 11, 2026, after a quadcopter opened direct fire on displaced people in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. Fatima Al-Zahra Ramzi Ahmed Al-Ma’ni, 26, and Nidal Eid Salmi Abu Halib, 62, were also killed after Israeli quadcopters fired directly at them. Fatima was killed in May 2026, while Nidal was killed on October 11, 2025, a day after the “ceasefire” went into effect.
In addition to direct firing at the targets, Euro-Med Monitor noted two further patterns of killing involving the use of Israeli quadcopters:
Dropping explosive munitions on civilian gatherings and tents housing displaced people.
Using these drones to impose fire control over areas adjacent to what is known as the “yellow line” by targeting civilians as they attempted to reach their homes and lands or carry out their work there.
Targeting of children
A June 2026 paper from Brown University’s Costs of War project, Lethal Precision Without Accountability: Israeli Government “Quadcopter” Use in Gaza, found “clear evidence that tactical drones have been used for lethal attacks in Gaza.”
“Ninety percent of the 18 cases of child death or injury by gunshots documented by Dr. [Mimi] Syed [one of the authors of the paper] were reported to be fired by quadcopters, per witnesses who brought the injured or killed children into the hospital,” the paper noted. “Most of the wounds were caused by single small caliber rounds to the head, neck, chest, or abdomen. Given this pattern of single-shot precision, these types of wounds strongly suggest targeting that fails to discriminate civilians from combatants.”
The paper was the result of Dr. Syed’s visit to the Gaza Strip between August and September 2024.
Euro-Med Monitor said that its field documentation is consistent with the findings of the Costs of War paper. Citing the paper, it further added:
The report presented five detailed cases supported, in each instance, by X-ray images or diagrams based on clinical photographs and witness testimonies. One case involved a seven-year-old child who was wounded inside an area designated as humanitarian while playing in the street, with no one else in the surrounding area being struck by gunfire. Medical, imaging, and ballistic analysis in three cases concluded that the entry angles and trajectories of the bullets were from above, consistent with gunfire originating from a drone. Although these incidents occurred in 2024, these findings are consistent with the pattern documented by Euro-Med Monitor at a later stage and constitute strong evidence of the use of precise, targeted gunfire directly and deliberately against children.
The Euro-Med Monitor report published testimony from the father of a boy who has been permanently disabled after being hit in the skull by metal shrapnel when an Israeli quadcopter dropped an explosive on civilians:
In testimony to Euro-Med Monitor’s team, the father of 11-year-old Amir Mohammed Khalil Shaath, a resident of Qizan Rashwan south of Khan Younis who was displaced to an area near Al-Sikka, adjacent to the Yellow Line, described what happened, saying: “On that day, 12 August 2026, I received a text message inviting them to collect a food parcel, so I went with my son Amir to the designated warehouse in the afternoon. On our way back on foot to our residential area in Al-Sikka neighbourhood, at around 5 p.m., we came under random and intense gunfire from a quadcopter flying at low altitude between abandoned residential buildings. This was followed by the dropping of an explosive bomb, which caused a violent explosion and sent shrapnel flying. Metal fragments became lodged in my son Amir’s skull and thigh, causing fractures and severe damage to the skull bones, and he lost consciousness for a long period as a result. He was taken to Nasser Hospital, where doctors said that if he had arrived a few minutes later, he would have died from internal bleeding in the brain. Medical teams managed to control the bleeding, but the fragments lodged in his skull could not be removed with the locally available capabilities. The child sustained a permanent mobility impairment, losing the ability to walk or stand. Medical teams declared that the available local treatment options had been exhausted and recommended that he travel abroad for treatment to remove the fragments lodged in his skull.”