A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Eyewitnesses tell NPR that the Israeli military is using a new type of drone in its war against Hamas in Gaza - a sniper drone. For months, NPR has collected more than a dozen accounts from people who have seen these sniper drones being used in Gaza. And many say they have seen them used to shoot and sometimes kill civilians. For more on this, we're joined by NPR's Kat Lonsdorf. Kat, so why did you start looking into this?
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Yeah, well, I first heard about these drones this summer. We interviewed a man named Adeeb Shakfa (ph), who was in Gaza. He was telling us about an incident at the end of May when he was walking on a quiet day with his 32-year-old son, and a small drone appeared and shot his son in the head. He told us two men rushed in to help his son, and the drone shot them, too. One of those men was killed along with Shakfa's son. You know, we know that drones are used in Gaza for surveillance and even to drop bombs by the Israeli military. But when I first heard this, my editor and I had this moment, like, wait, a drone shot them? We thought maybe we didn't understand correctly, so I started looking into it.
MARTÍNEZ: Wow. So what did you find?
LONSDORF: So I pretty quickly figured out that this technology does exist. It's been on the market for several years, and there are a few different companies making it. Many of them are based in Israel or have ties to Israel or the Israeli military. And just so you can picture it, you know, these are small drones with multiple rotors on the top. They kind of look like the drones that anyone could buy at, like, an electronic store, but a little bit bigger. And then they've got a camera attached to them so that whoever's operating the drone can see what's in front of them, in front of the drone. And then there's a long rifle barrel attached, and that gun can be fired remotely. And the drone is designed to compensate for the recoil of the weapon while it's hovering.
I should say that NPR repeatedly asked the Israeli military if it was using this sniper drone technology in Gaza. It didn't respond to our question. But it's very common that a military won't disclose what weapons they're using, especially in active warfare. And like I said, several of the companies we found have ties to Israel, and the Israeli Defense Ministry has touted the technology in the past.
MARTÍNEZ: What did you hear from people in Gaza about how this sniper drone is being used?
LONSDORF: Well, we heard a lot of pretty disturbing stories - you know, that these drones appear quickly and quietly, that they come in after air strikes and shoot people trying to pull people out of the rubble. They come near hospitals. They come to camps of displaced people. And many people told us stories about them being used to shoot civilians, sometimes children. I talked with Dr. Mimi Syed. She's an American emergency trauma doctor who worked in Gaza recently. And she told me that she would see multiple patients a day, many in pediatrics, with single gunshot wounds to the head.
MIMI SYED: Every time someone would come in, they would be brought by family, but it was my routine practice to ask what happened. And every time, it would be a drone quadcopter shot - quadcopter drone shot.
LONSDORF: So she said she saw this day after day - people coming in from different parts of Gaza and talking about a quadcopter drone shooting from different incidents. You know, people in Gaza talk about these drones all the time. We started noticing it after interview after interview, and it seems like they've become really, really common. We asked the Israeli military about several of the individual incidents we heard about, including the first one I told you about. It said it was unaware of the incidents and said that any suggestion that Israel intends to harm civilians is, quote, "unfounded and baseless."
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's NPR's Kat Lonsdorf. Kat, thank you very much.
LONSDORF: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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