Israeli Drone Strike Kills Gaza Teen Seconds After First Strike Wounds Paramedic, Witnesses and Video Say

Mohammad Abdul Zinati was walking home from school on Salah Khalaf Street in northern Gaza City when an explosion tore through the street around 3:30pm. The 15-year-old ran toward the smoke with a group of neighbors, according to witnesses who spoke to the Guardian.

What he found was a man bleeding on the ground, still alive, calling for help. Gaza's civil defense later identified him as Sharif Shadi Labad, a paramedic. Mohammad ran to him.

"I started shouting: 'Run! Get away!'" said Mohammed Rajeh Zinati, 26, the boy's cousin, who says he had spotted an Israeli drone overhead and tried to warn him. "At that moment, Mohammad had reached the injured man. As soon as he got there, the drone struck him."

"Mohammad was hit directly in the chest and abdomen and was killed almost instantly. I couldn't do anything to rescue him."

A second witness, Tamer Lubbad, who filmed the attack, told the Guardian he and others had rushed toward the first explosion and found Labad still alive on the ground before the second strike hit.

The Guardian reviewed the footage with weapons experts. Trevor Ball, a conflict researcher and drone trainer at Bellingcat, identified the munition as a Mikholit glide bomb, deployed from an Israeli drone equipped with high-resolution cameras. Ball said the UAV's operators would have been able to see the teenager and the wounded man before the second strike, and that some Mikholit variants can be redirected in flight after launch.

The sequence, a strike followed by a second strike on the same spot once bystanders arrive, matches what is commonly described as a "double tap" attack.

The Israeli military told the Guardian that Labad was a Hamas member of the Nukhba forces who took part in the October 7, 2023 attack at the Erez crossing and was targeted while allegedly planning new operations. Asked directly why the second strike proceeded when its target was visibly a minor, the military did not answer the question. It said it was "aware of reports indicating that an uninvolved individual was harmed as a result of the strike targeting the terrorist, regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and makes every effort to minimise such harm," and said the incident is under review.

Mohammad's body was later photographed under a white shroud outside al-Shifa hospital, where his father recited verses from the Qur'an over him. Neighbors described the boy as someone who helped elderly residents collect water from delivery trucks. "When he was killed, people from the neighbourhood came out into the street, crying for him," his cousin said.