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LONDON: A British surgeon who recently returned from Gaza has claimed Israeli soldiers are shooting civilians at aid distribution points “almost like a game of target practice,” allegations the Israeli military have strongly denied.

Dr. Nick Maynard, a veteran of humanitarian missions in Gaza over the past 15 years, spent four weeks working at Nasser Hospital in the south of the Strip.

that the population is suffering from “profound malnutrition” and described the medical crisis facing patients and healthcare workers.

Speaking to The World with Yalda Hakim on Sky News, Maynard said: “I met several doctors who had cartons of formula feed in their luggage — and they were all confiscated by the Israeli border guards. Nothing else got confiscated, just the formula feed.

“There were four premature babies who died during the first two weeks when I was in Nasser Hospital — and there will be many, many more deaths unless the Israelis allow proper food to get in there.”

Maynard, who has now visited Gaza three times since the war began, said the paediatric unit is relying on sugar water to feed children due to a lack of baby formula.

“They’ve got a small amount of formula feed for very small babies, but not enough,” he said.

The effects of the crisis have also been severe on his colleagues.

“I saw people I’d known for years and I didn’t recognise some of them,” he said.

“Two colleagues had lost 20kg and 30kg respectively. They were shells, they’re all hungry.

“They’re going to work every day, then going home to their tents where they have no food.”

In the most serious allegation, Maynard claimed civilians were being shot by Israeli forces while they were collecting food at aid points.

“Israeli soldiers are shooting civilians at aid points almost like a game of target practice,” he said.

Israel’s military “categorically rejects the claims of intentional harm to civilians, particularly in the manner described. For the sake of clarity, the army’s binding orders prohibit forces operating in the area from intentionally firing at civilians,” it said.

“We are aware of reports of casualties among those who arrived at the aid distribution sites. These incidents are under examination by the relevant (military) authorities. Any allegation of a violation of the law or regulations will be thoroughly investigated, including taking appropriate action if necessary.”

The military said it was “working to facilitate and ease the distribution of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation at the designated distribution centres, as well as through other international actors. These efforts are being conducted under difficult and complex operational conditions.”

Maynard claimed to have operated on boys as young as 11 who had been shot while collecting food at distribution sites run by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

“They had gone to get food for their starving families and they were shot,” he said. “I operated on one 12-year-old boy who died on the operating table because his injuries were so severe.”

He also alleged a disturbing pattern in the injuries observed during his time at the hospital.

“What was even more distressing was the pattern of injuries that we saw, the clustering of injuries to particular body parts on certain days,” he said.

“One day they’d be coming in predominately with gunshot wounds to the head or the neck, another day to the chest, another day to the abdomen.

“Twelve days ago, four young teenage boys came in, all of whom had been shot in the testicles and deliberately so. This is not coincidental.

“The clustering was far too obvious to be coincidental, and it seemed to us like this was almost like a game of target practice. I would never have believed this possible unless I'd witnessed this with my own eyes.”

LANNEMEZAN, France: One of France’s longest-held inmates, the pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, 74, was released from prison and deported on Friday, after more than 40 years behind bars for the killings of two diplomats.

At around 3:40 am (01:40 GMT), a convoy of six vehicles left the Lannemezan penitentiary with lights flashing, AFP journalists saw.

Hours later, he was placed on a plane bound for Lebanon.

As he disembarked in Beirut, he was welcomed by family members at the airport’s VIP lounge.

Dozens of supporters, some waving Palestinian or Lebanese Communist Party flags gathered near the arrivals hall to give him a hero’s reception, an AFP correspondent said.

Abdallah’s family had said previously they would take him to their hometown of Kobayat, in northern Lebanon, where a reception is planned.

Abdallah was detained in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for his involvement in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in Paris.

The Paris Court of Appeal had ordered his release “effective July 25” on the condition that he leave French territory and never return.

While he had been eligible for release since 1999, his previous requests were denied with the United States — a civil party to the case — consistently opposing him leaving prison.

Inmates serving life sentences in France are typically freed after fewer than 30 years.

Abdallah’s lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, visited for a final time on Thursday.

“He seemed very happy about his upcoming release, even though he knows he is returning to the Middle East in an extremely tough context for Lebanese and Palestinian populations,” Chalanset told AFP.

AFP visited Abdallah last week after the court’s release decision, accompanying a lawmaker to the detention center.

The founder of the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions (FARL) — a long-disbanded Marxist anti-Israel group — said for more than four decades he had continued to be a “militant with a struggle.”

After his arrest in 1984, French police discovered submachine guns and transceiver stations in one of his Paris apartments.

The appeals court in February noted that the FARL “had not committed a violent action since 1984” and that Abdallah “today represented a past symbol of the Palestinian struggle.”

The appeals judges also found the length of his detention “disproportionate” to the crimes and given his age.