IDF Releases Video Showing Pilot Aborting Air Strike After Spotting Children in Target Area

A video showing an IAF pilot aborting an airstrike because children were present at the target. Photo: IDF Twitter.

The IDF released video on Sunday of an air strike on Gaza being aborted at the last minute because the pilot and Command Control realized there were children present at the target.

The video shows a black and white image of a building through the crosshairs of the aerial vehicle.

Command Control says, “Check if there are children there, there are children there.”

The pilot is unsure at first, saying, “They are moving too fast, it can’t be children.”

“There are probably children here, we are stopping everything,” Command Control says.

The pilot responds, “That’s right, there is a big one and a few little ones.”

“We suspect there are children here and we won’t continue given the possibility that they are children,” Command Control states.

Fighting a terrorist organization that operates within civilian areas isn’t easy. Watch as IDF pilots call off a strike because children were there: pic.twitter.com/N8ycwqwgck

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 16, 2021
Israel regularly calls off air strikes if civilians and especially children will be harmed. During its 2014 conflict with Hamas, it released a similar video.

“There are people close to our target,” the pilot carrying out the mission is heard saying in the clip. “It looks like there are people, possibly children in our targeted area.”

An operator responds: “We are not going to strike this target now, let’s move on.”

In 2014, Col (ret.) Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, told The Algemeiner, “Three days ago I spoke to an Israeli pilot that told me that the same morning he had aborted an enemy target a total of 17 times because there were civilians in the target zone, and eventually he abandoned the operation.”

“I asked him, was that not frustrating? His answer was simply no,” said Kemp. “And that to me, is one of the best things about the IAF — that the last very thing they want to do is bomb a target and have that on their conscience for the rest of their lives.”