BIRMINGHAM, England

A lawmaker from Britain’s ruling Labour Party said evidence shown by a retired surgeon, who has been to war zones including Gaza, suggests Israeli forces targeting Palestinian children by drones was like a “warped video game.”

Speaking at the Humanitarian situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories debate at the Westminster Hall on Tuesday, Labour lawmaker Patricia Ferguson referenced a parliamentary evidence given by retired vascular surgeon Prof. Nizam Mamode, who has returned back to the UK from Gaza and explained how the Palestinian children were deliberately targeted by Israel.

Ferguson told the hall the details of her encounter with the evidence: “I thought I had seen and heard it all, the death, the disease and sheer brutality reported on our TV screens night, after night. But then I went to Professor Mamode’s presentation. He spoke calmly and slowly about his experiences in Palestine, using slides and a video diary.

“He demonstrated the symmetrical puncture wounds on a dead child’s body. Wounds in the region of the body’s major arteries that were too precise to have been the work of a human sniper. They were the work of drones. Targeted at innocent civilians, and in this case, a child.”

Ferguson said the official death toll in Gaza is 43,391 people, of which 16,500 are children, with 10,000 still missing.

“For me it was the cold calculation of using machines to kill children, I thought it was some kind of warped video game that was the most disturbing aspect of Professor Mamode’s presentation which made those statistics… mean a great deal,” she said.

Ferguson said she would like to see wounded children being brought to the UK and Europe to be treated.

Alex Ballinger, another Labour lawmaker, said a child in Gaza was being killed every 10 minutes, on average.

“Whilst Israel has every right to respond to the awful attacks of Hamas on October 7, the disregard for civilian lives and failure to ensure adequate humanitarian access during their response is completely unacceptable,” he said.

Foreign Office minister Anneliese Dodds said: “It’s very clear that Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe. On November 12 the warning from the Famine Review Committee marked a terrible new milestone, famine is now imminent in areas of northern Gaza. Starvation, malnutrition and related death in these areas are rising fast, as is the risk of disease.”

“Now, northern Gaza has no fully functioning hospitals. The sick and injured must be allowed to leave Gaza to receive care.”