The Israeli military has jailed three soldiers who refused to return to the Gaza Strip after they killed Palestinian children.
According to the Israeli outlet Kan, four soldiers from the 931st Battalion in the Nahal Brigade were removed from combat and punished after informing their commanders that they would not return to fight.
The four had fought for several rounds in the Gaza Strip, spending between 13 and 17 months in the enclave during the ongoing war. Kan cited the soldiers as saying they were suffering from a “deep internal crisis” during the fighting.
One of the soldiers imprisoned told Kan that he felt unable to return after killing children and a mother.
“We were in an extermination area, we saw three figures entering the area and, as instructed, we shot. Later it turned out – these were 12-13 year old children and their mother. We didn’t know. We followed orders,” they told the outlet.
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“After this incident, we had three soldiers leave because of post-traumatic stress disorder who suffered from dreams at night, insomnia, they would see these children. They didn’t talk to us, they didn’t bring us a psychologist, everything continued as usual.”
Three of the four soldiers received prison sentences ranging from one week to 12 days. The fourth has not yet been tried.
One of the jailed soldiers had been wounded last year during fighting along the Gaza border and had returned voluntarily to fight after recovering.
According to an AFP tally based on figures from the Israeli military, 462 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the war on Gaza began in October 2023.
Twenty-three have been killed in the past month alone.
Since the war began nearly 22 months ago, Israeli forces have killed over 59,800 Palestinians, including at least 17,000 children. More than 144,000 people have been wounded.
