Israeli army broadcasts baby cries and women screaming to 'lure and kill' Palestinians in Gaza: report

The Israeli army is broadcasting recordings of women screaming and babies crying to lure Palestinians out into the streets in Gaza and kill them, a rights monitor has reported.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based group, said the technique was being used to intimidate and target Palestinian civilians in the central Gaza Strip's Nuseirat refugee camp, which is currently under assault by Israel.

Testimonies from residents who spoke to the team confirmed hearing sounds of crying and screams broadcast late at night on Sunday and Monday.

When the residents went out to investigate and try to help they were targeted by Israeli quadcopter drones and gunfire, the report said.

The alarming technique was used with the intent of luring the camp’s residents out into the streets, where they could be more easily targeted by Israeli snipers, Euro-Med said.

Maha Hussaini, the strategy director for Euro-Med in Gaza, told The New Arab that some of the sounds are often broadcast late at night when the streets are empty.

"This technique and noise is primarily used to bring people out to target them, because at night no one is out, especially following the random attacks and bombings on the Nuseirat Camp," she said.

"The Israeli forces find no one to target, so has resorted to this trick to deceive people. In the past few days, a number of people have been wounded because of this technique, around seven people, some of them were targeted in the head as they went to see where the sound was coming from."

Euro-Med also found that the tactic involved broadcasting the sound of gunshots, armed conflicts, explosions, military vehicle movements and at times, even songs in Hebrew and Arabic, in a bid to psychologically intimidate civilians who live in total darkness.

A 20-year-old resident of a displacement camp in Gaza, who requested to remain anonymous due to safety concerns, told the organisation they left their camp after hearing the sounds.

"We heard the voices of girls and women screaming: 'Come, help me, I am injured!' We went out to find out what was happening. No women were found, but we were directly targeted by a quadcopter drone," they said.

"I fled inside, and two people right in front of me were seriously injured. Because of the ongoing gunfire, we were unable to treat them, so we called an ambulance and they arrived to transport them." 

Another 60-year-old woman said she heard the sound of loud gunfire and then the cries of women, which continued for 10 to 15 minutes.

"Given the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, Euro-Med Monitor warns of the dangers posed by the Israeli army’s immoral and inhumane tactics against the civilian population there," the organisation said in a statement.

Al Jazeera's Gaza correspondent, Anas al-Sharif, also reported that Israel was using drones to broadcast sounds of children crying in the central Gaza Strip.

In a voice recording published on Tuesday, the repeated sounds of babies crying, with short pauses in between, could be heard. The New Arab could not independently verify the audio.

At least 33,800 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli forces since the start of its relentless war on 7 October, with most of the victims being women and children. At least 76,000 Palestinians have since been wounded.

Human Rights Watch said in January that Palestinian civilians were being targeted, attacked, abused and killed over the past year, at a scale unprecedented in recent history.

"Israeli authorities' repression of Palestinians, undertaken as part of a policy to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians, amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution," the group said in a statement.