(LifeSiteNews) — Israeli forces in Gaza regularly bulldozed the dead bodies of unarmed Palestinian aid seekers whom they shot and killed as the starving civilians attempted to reach aid trucks and return home to their loved ones with modest food supplies.

Using this heavy equipment, Israelis often buried them in shallow, unmarked graves and, on other occasions, left the corpses to rot in areas too dangerous for recovery.

An investigative report from CNN released last Wednesday documented the likely violations of international law utilizing hundreds of videos and photos from around Zikim in northern Gaza where the apparent crimes took place.

As other human rights groups have documented, the mainstream cable outlet spoke with two ex-military personal who witnessed similar practices of using bulldozers to bury Palestinian corpses in shallow, unmarked graves.

One Israeli army (IDF) whistleblower who served in early 2024 said that “nine bodies of unarmed Palestinians” were left decomposing for almost two days around his base near the Netzarim Corridor. “The smell of the rotting corpses became overwhelming as dogs scavenged the remains.”

He recalled a commander directing bulldozer operators “to cover up the bodies with sand.”

“Just to see this amount of bodies around you, when you see they’re unarmed, when you see dogs eating them to play with the bones and legs and skull. It’s terrible,” he told CNN.

To his knowledge, no photos were taken of the bodies to help identify them, and he lamented, “The families maybe don’t know what happened with their loved ones.”

Israelis kill starving Palestinians

Breaking the Silence (BTS), an NGO that provides a forum for IDF veteran testimonies regarding Israeli army war crimes against the occupied Palestinian people, affirmed that it had received numerous eyewitness accounts describing similar practices.

Another former soldier, a captain, said he was never given directives from the military on how they should treat bodies of Palestinians they had killed in Gaza. He recalled an incident when one such corpse blocked a road and officers in the command center directed a bulldozer to push the body into a shallow grave on the side of the road.

“We were never given any protocol or any order of how to handle at all any bodies of either combatant or non-combatant that we came across in the war,” he said.

CNN reported that the IDF did not respond to their questions regarding these testimonies of their former soldiers.

The cable outlet also referenced a report released in January 2024 documenting the IDF’s use of bulldozers to desecrate 16 Palestinian cemeteries in Gaza. This included “leaving gravestones ruined, soil upturned and, in some cases, bodies unearthed.”

Corroborating the testimonies is satellite imagery confirming bulldozing activity across the summer in the areas where Palestinians seeking flour and basic food supplies were killed by Israeli soldiers.

Graphic footage taken on September 11 shows Palestinians fleeing the Zikim area hauling sacks of flour beneath continuous gunfire.

“At least one person carrying flour appears to be shot from behind in the footage, with the gunfire seeming to come from the direction of an IDF position that CNN identified in satellite imagery,” the report reads.

Audio forensics expert Robert Maher of Montana State University examined the videos and determined the shots originated from around 340 meters (1,115 feet) from the filming location that CNN reports corresponds to the distance from the IDF position.

Israelis leave Palestinian corpses to be eaten by dogs

A second video reveals a group of unarmed Palestinians tending to the bodies of one dead person and another injured before they carry them away as gunfire continues.

In another case, two eyewitnesses recounted one deadly incident on June 15 when “shortly after the aid truck was surrounded, the Israeli military opened fire toward the vehicle, with many people appearing to have been shot and collapsing beneath the truck.”

Only several days later was a Palestinian ambulance crew allowed to access the scene with one civil defense worker reporting, “we were shocked by the scene.”

“The (bodies) we recovered were decomposed – they had clearly been there for a while, there were signs that dogs had eaten parts of them,” the witness said.

CNN corroborated the story with geolocated videos of the location revealing an overturned truck, a pile of debris, several decomposing bodies partially buried in the sand and even a nearby stray dog.

According to multiple reports, including human rights organizations, such blatant criminal acts by the Israeli army against destitute civilians have been standard throughout their genocidal operation in Gaza.

An IDF statement to CNN stated the army “does not intentionally shoot at innocent civilians,” though no definition of the term “innocent” is provided in the report.

75% of Jewish Israelis: ‘no innocent people in Gaza’

Likely due to heavy propaganda efforts within the Jewish Zionist community, a Hebrew University poll released in June confirmed that roughly 75% of Jewish Israelis agree with the statement “there are no innocent people in Gaza” where — at least since October 7, 2023 — there resided one million children.

A LifeSiteNews report released last March extensively documents the genocidal ideology of heretical religious Zionism that rationalizes the expelling or direct killing of the entire Palestinian population by Jews as a supposed fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Testimonies of massive numbers of children being assassinated are confirmed by many Israeli soldiers confessing to murdering children.

READ: Israeli extremist rabbis instruct soldiers heading to Gaza: ‘Kill all their children’

Additionally, Israeli outlet Haaretz published a report in June quoting IDF soldiers who said they were ordered by their superiors to fire upon desperate, starving Palestinians seeking humanitarian aid distribution, though they posed no threat to them.

An open-source investigation revealed in September that Israeli forces had killed almost 3,000 Palestinian aid-seekers and wounded nearly 20,000 others over the period of Israel’s U.S.-backed genocidal annihilation of Gaza.

Reliable reports on Monday confirm the deaths of 70,365 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, 2023, the majority of whom are women and children. The number of injured has risen to 171,058, with many more trapped under rubble and inaccessible to rescue and civil defense teams.

Studies indicate the ministry’s death figures are most likely a significant undercount.

Video shows Israeli soldiers opening fire towards Palestinians trying to reach a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) food distribution site in southern Gaza. At least 838 people have been killed at or near GHF aid sites since May. pic.twitter.com/glWuOEVDlU

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 15, 2025

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