An 18-month-old child living in Gaza has been returned to his family by the Israeli army with traces of burn injuries and puncture wounds on his legs. According to doctors, these injuries clearly result from the torture suffered by the child during his detention by his father.
By Tareq S. Hajjaj, March 26, 2026
The marks on the child’s legs appear undeniable. Circular burns, as caused by cigarette butts, as well as puncture wounds. His pants have two holes and are stained with blood. Jawad Abu Nasser, an 18-month-old, was returned to his family in Gaza by the Israeli army in this condition.
In a video testimony for Mondoweiss, 19-year-old Waad al-Shafi, from the Maghazi region in central Gaza, holds her son in her arms and shows his legs and feet to the camera. According to the family, the young boy was subjected to severe torture by the Israeli army. They claim that the Israelis crushed cigarettes on his legs and pierced them with sharp objects.
“Here his foot was pierced, and here cigarettes were crushed on him,” explains Jawad’s mother, holding his feet and showing each injury. “And here is another wound. And another.”
The family suspects that the torture inflicted on Jawad was intended to pressure his father to provide information, and they believe he was likely present when the soldiers mistreated his son.
“They were both tortured together,” says Waad al-Shafi.
Waad al-Shafi recounts that her husband, Osama Abu Nassar, went out with their son in his arms to buy him candies from a nearby store. Instead, he mistakenly headed east towards the “yellow line,” the invisible border that cuts through Gaza as part of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The family lost contact with him around 10 a.m. and did not hear from him until 8 p.m. on the same day, March 19.
She adds that her husband had been suffering from severe psychological distress for a few weeks, and his condition was not stable.
According to eyewitness accounts who saw Osama from a distance, Israeli soldiers opened fire in his direction when he entered the area. A quadcopter drone ordered him to put down his son, who was sitting on his shoulders, and undress himself and his son, despite the cold. Witnesses who saw the scene recounted to the family that after he complied, four soldiers approached and immobilized him, while a fifth took the child.
Around 8 p.m., members of the International Red Cross contacted al-Shafi and informed her that they had her son. Accompanied by her father and father-in-law, al-Shafi went to the al-Maghazi market, where she retrieved her child wrapped in a survival blanket.
When she first saw him, she recalls, his face was pale and yellowish, and he looked exhausted. “I thought it was just from the long day he had been through,” she remembers. “I never imagined that Israeli soldiers could torture a child barely a year and a half old.”
At that moment, the family was still unaware of the extent of what Jawad had endured. His mother held him tightly in her arms as soon as she saw him, but he immediately began screaming in pain. “Something was wrong,” recalls al-Shafi. She began examining his body, starting from the head, then moving down to the chest, shoulders, abdomen, then to the back and hands. Finally, she reached the feet and saw the burns.
The family could not take the child to the hospital that night due to the difficulties of traveling at such a late hour; most of Gaza had no access to electricity, plunging Gaza into darkness and making nighttime travel dangerous.
The next morning, they took him to the hospital. It was the first day of the month, March 20. “After examinations, doctors concluded that the marks on his legs were clearly the result of torture,” says Jawad’s grandfather, Muhammad Abu Nassar, to Mondoweiss.
Al-Shafi specifies that the doctors immediately identified the wounds as corresponding to the insertion and removal of a sharp object in the child’s feet.
Holding the child in his arms, Jawad’s grandfather shows the toddler’s little pants, stained with blood and riddled with holes.
“The Red Cross team told us that the blood on his pants came from his father, who was shot in the shoulder in front of his eyes,” recounts Muhammad Abu Nassar, Jawad’s 18-month-old grandfather, on March 24, 2026.
Muhammad Abu Nassar explains that the family does not know how Osama’s blood ended up on his son’s clothes, but they suspect that the child was tortured while in the presence of his father.
“This would mean that Osama was clearly bleeding on his son,” and that they were both tortured together,” added Muhammad.
Mondoweiss reached out to the hospital staff who treated Jawad but was unable to obtain immediate comments.
The grandfather explains that his son Osama had been suffering from severe psychological distress and uncontrollable anger outbursts shortly before the incident. On the day of the events, he asked to go out with a friend. His father encouraged him, hoping it would help lift his spirits, but less than half an hour later, neighbors informed the family that instead of heading west to the grocery store to buy candies for his child, Osama was heading east towards the Yellow Line, just five minutes away on foot.
That’s when soldiers opened fire on him and his child before detaining them. Neighbors who witnessed the incident informed the family that the quadcopter drone present at the scene had ordered Osama and Jawad to advance 100 meters before asking them to undress. That’s the last thing they saw before the two were detained.
When Osama was returned to them in such a state, the family was shocked. The child’s grandfather describes this as a far worse crime than the usual bombings and missile strikes that Palestinians in Gaza continue to endure. “Bombings are random,” he says. “They kill men, women, and children. But this was deliberate.”
Translation: JB for Palestine Media Agency Source: Mondoweiss
