The Israeli military has weaponized a fleet of Chinese-manufactured commercial drones to attack Palestinians in parts of Gaza that it seeks to depopulate, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call can reveal. According to interviews with seven soldiers and officers who served in the Strip, these drones are operated manually by troops on the ground, and are frequently used to bomb Palestinian civilians — including children — in an effort to force them to leave their homes or prevent them from returning to evacuated areas.
Because the Palestinians were killed far from where the soldiers were positioned, S., an Israeli soldier who served in the Rafah area this year, said that their corpses weren’t collected; instead, the army left them to be eaten by stray dogs. “You could see it on the drone footage,” he explained. “I couldn’t bring myself to watch a dog eating a body, but others around me watched it. The dogs have learned to run toward areas where there’s shooting or explosions — they understand it probably means there’s a body there.”
