A Palestinian child is seen in this file photo with a gunshot wound to his head.

Washington, November 3 (RHC)-- An American surgeon who volunteered at the European hospital in the Gaza Strip says he was haunted by the harrowing scenes he witnessed in the besieged Palestinian territory. 

Doctor Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon, who was in Gaza in March and April, said the one thing that he kept talking about a lot since he left Gaza was the widespread shooting of children.

Sidhwa said he was haunted by something he saw again and again in Gaza; “children shot in the head.”

"It's pretty shocking to see in person when almost every day you see a new young — and I don't mean 17-year-old kids, I mean young children — come into the hospital with single gunshot wounds to the head.”

The U.S. surgeon said the crimes committed by the Israeli regime in Gaza with the support of Washington are “shocking and totally indefensible.”

The surgeon was among 100 health professionals who sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris last month and demanded an immediate end to Washington’s support to Israel.

They wrote in the letter: "We witnessed atrocities with our own eyes, and we would like to tell you about them, because you're funding them."

Sidhwa said he had volunteered as a trauma surgeon in Ukraine, Haiti, Burkina Faso, and Ghana.  But, he said, what he saw in Gaza in March and April of this year has totally changed him.  Sidhwa said he had never seen so much horror in his life.

Another U.S. surgeon, Mark Perlmutter, who had also volunteered at the European hospital of Khan Younis earlier this year, told France 24 on Tuesday that he "saw two children that were shot twice” in the head.  "No child gets shot twice by mistake.” 

He said Israeli snipers were deliberately shooting children in Gaza.  Perlmutter also admitted that the United States is complicit in Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.

"The Western world is paying for the bombs that are burning children to death. They're paying for the bullets that shredded those children.  We are complicit in this,” he said.

The number of Palestinian children killed in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza over the past year is horrifying, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.  It says the Israeli forces are killing Palestinian children at a rate that is unprecedented in the history of modern wars.

The regime's forces have so far killed more than 17,000 children since October 7, 2023, the rights group said.