Syrian snipers targeting children with spine injuries

Telegraph:

A senior Israeli doctor treating child victims of the Syrian civil war has said that snipers in the war-town country are aiming for the spine to cause maximum trauma.

Dr Yoav Hoffman, a doctor at the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, is one of many doctors who has been treating severely wounded Syrians at the Western Galilee Medical Centre in Nahariya, northern Israel.

Having examined the patients, 40 per cent of whom have been women and children, he came to a disturbing conclusion.

“I am sure that the snipers hit the spine on purpose,” he said this week after noticing the same gunshot wound “at this very same point” several times in the children he had treated.

At least five of the children were left partially or fully paralysed as a result of the injuries.

“You know by the hit it was by a sniper and it was on purpose,” he said.

“If you want to kill a man, or you want to kill a child, you put a bullet in his head or his heart. They purposefully put the bullet in the lumber [lower] spine so that the child would suffer. I don’t have any other explanation. It was cruel. I almost cried when I saw it,” he said.

Others at the hospital have made similar observations.
...

Targeting to maim non-combatants is and should be a war crime.  It tells you something about the lack of character of Syrian fighters.