On September 25, 2025, David McIntosh filed a report to his bosses at Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) detailing an account of Israeli soldiers gunning down a young Palestinian boy as he was getting food at a site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). “There’s no way he survived,” McIntosh told Drop Site News and Middle East Eye in his first interview since returning from Gaza five months ago. “He was murdered. He was straight up murdered.”
At the time, McIntosh was one month into a three month stint working as a contractor with GHF’s logistics partner SRS. Between August and October 2025, he mostly managed Site 4, the only aid site in central Gaza, near the Netzarim corridor. According to McIntosh, Site 4 was more dangerous for aid seekers than its other sites in southern Gaza.
Like thousands of other Palestinians trying to survive an Israeli-imposed starvation campaign on Gaza, the boy—who looked about 12 years old—had come to the site that day looking for food. After he managed to get his hands on an aid parcel, he continued playing atop a sand berm at the site, according to McIntosh.
Members of GHF’s security firm UG Solutions threw a flash bang grenade to warn the boy to leave the area. r later, Israeli snipers shot the boy in the shoulder near his chest. Severely wounded, he struggled to carry himself to a nearby bridge before collapsing.