The nurse holds the X-ray up to the light, and the bullet that lodged in Mohammed Abu Faress' chest comes into focus, along with bright shards of shattered bone. "A few inches either way and he would have been dead", says Ahmed al-Jabali.
Amid the chaos of battle, doctors at Gaza's Shifa hospital have detected a disturbing pattern in the injuries inflicted by Israeli soldiers. They are targeting the head and upper body.
Shifa has received 11 dead and treated 284 wounded since the fighting erupted on September 30. The majority had been shot in the upper body, with rubber bullets as well as live rounds, and 20% of patients had been hit in the head.
"Yesterday, a case came in without a brain", said a plastic surgeon at Shifa, who has trained and worked abroad. "Even in London, in Romania and in Yugoslavia, I never saw anything like it!"
The charge on every Palestinian doctor's lips is that they are firing to exact maximum damage, leaving injuries far deadlier than those inflicted in previous conflicts. "This time, there is a change of method, and I would like to say that the Israelis are trying very much to kill very many people", said Dr Mohawia Hassanen, head of emergency services. Doctors at the Makasid hospital in east Jerusalem note a similar pattern.
A survey of Palestinian hospitals conducted by the local chapter of Physicians for Human Rights found that 30% of injuries were from the stomach up, and there was a disproportionate number of eye injuries. Doctors at St John's hospital in Jerusalem have treated 18 Palestinians shot in the eye.
The use of rockets and helicopter gunships has had a devastating effect. On October 1, Mohammed Abu Faress went down to Netzarim junction with four of his friends to throw stones at the Israeli post there. All four were injured by live rounds. "I was lying on the ground, and the helicopter was flying and shooting", he said. He received two bullet wounds.
Down the hall, the aged parents of Zaher Ismail, 17, are exhausted after sitting by his bed all night. He took two bullets below his heart on October 3, fired by Israeli soldiers from the concrete and steel bunker at Netzarim junction.
"Many people were shot by M-16, high velocity bullets that shatter on impact", Wahib Dajani, a doctor at Makasid told reporters. "This is a weapon you use armed soldier to armed soldier, World War III, but not against civilians."
The Israeli army insists that it is behaving "according to our rules and our morals", meeting fire with fire. "We want to be very clear: we react when they open fire on one of our people and on our position, but we are not firing on specific parts of the body. We return fire to the source of fire", said Major Olivier Rafowicz, an army spokesperson.
But international outrage at Israel's tactics is growing. Stunned by the image of 12-year-old Rami Al-Dura, who was shot by Israeli soldiers, international human rights organisations are demanding investigations into Israel's methods of containing civil unrest. A two-year-old baby girl, Sarah, has also shot by Israeli forces.
Human Rights Watch has joined Amnesty International in expressing grave concern at the high casualty toll and killing of children and medics. The International Committee of the Red Cross has made a rare written protest against the death of an ambulance driver in Gaza at the weekend, who was shot dead when he was coming to Al-Dura's aid. Israeli human rights groups are conducting their own investigations.
The Israeli government has been repeatedly criticised at the United Nations and during a diplomatic meeting in Paris, where Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is fighting off French and Palestinian calls for international inquiry.
There have been many documented instances of close-range shootings at eye level. "What is happening in these few days is that the Israelis are shooting at our people and our children, not with the aim of injury, but for killing", said Hassanen.
BY SUZANNE GOLDENBERG
[Abridged from the Khaleej Times, Dubai.]