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An Israeli veterans’ organization composed of current and former military service members has leveled serious allegations against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), claiming the military routinely carries out lethal strikes on Palestinians in Gaza before retroactively assembling evidence to frame those killed as Hamas affiliates — a practice the group calls “retrospective incrimination.”

Breaking the Silence, a nonprofit founded in 2004 that offers a confidential space for Israeli soldiers to share their on-the-ground experiences in the occupied Palestinian territories, laid out the claims in comments from its executive director Nadav Weiman during an interview with France 24.

Weiman outlined a clear pattern he says emerges from dozens of soldier testimonies collected by his organization: the IDF conducts strikes first, kills targets, and only then launches an effort to dig up links to Hamas or other armed groups to justify the deadly operation. Soldiers executing strikes on the ground, he emphasized, do not possess the affiliation evidence that is later used to defend the attacks to the international community.

“First, we shoot, we kill, and then we think, and then we try to find a reason why it happened,” Weiman stated in the interview. He pointed to multiple high-casualty incidents as examples, including the IDF’s large-scale operations surrounding Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, the killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics in Rafah, and multiple air strikes that have left large numbers of civilian non-combatants dead.

Weiman explained that after strikes are completed, Israeli intelligence pulls the identities of all people killed, then analysts comb through records to find any potential connection — no matter how tangential — to armed groups. Common justifications used after the fact, he noted, include the killed person being located near a building the IDF associates with Hamas, having a family member with alleged links to the group, or having previously been listed on a movement payroll. From there, the IDF constructs a narrative to frame the strike as a targeted operation against legitimate military targets.

To illustrate the disconnect between on-ground action and post-strike justification, Weiman drew a comparison to operations around Nasser Hospital: “I don’t think that the tank that fired the tank shells at the hospital had a booklet with 25,000 Hamas members, and they looked photo after photo and said, ‘Ah, there are Hamas members over there’. This is something that we do after we shoot.”

The group says this practice is not a series of isolated mistakes by individual soldiers, but rather the product of intentionally permissive rules of engagement that have opened the door to widespread human rights violations throughout the ongoing Gaza war. The core motivation for the retrospective labeling, Weiman argued, is the Israeli government and military’s desire to secure international legitimacy for their military campaign in Gaza.

“Suddenly the IDF spokesperson in the state of Israel needs to explain to the international community what we did over there, who are the targets for the attack,” Weiman said. “And that’s why I said legitimisation before, because the IDF in the state of Israel wants international legitimisation to do what we are doing in Gaza.”

Soldier testimonies collected by Breaking the Silence show the pattern of post-killing classification as terrorists extends even to unarmed Palestinians and children under the age of 18, the organization confirmed. The group also highlighted another consequence of the current permissive rules of engagement: the IDF has classified any person carrying a camera in Gaza as a potential threat to Israeli forces, treating camera operators as legitimate military targets.

That policy, Breaking the Silence says, directly explains the extraordinarily high death toll among journalists reporting on the war in Gaza. Just as with other civilian deaths, the group claims the IDF has retroactively justified the killing of journalists by linking them to armed groups after the fact to defend its actions to global audiences.

Original reporting for this story was published by Middle East Eye, a media outlet that provides independent coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and surrounding global regions.

In the wake of catastrophic flash floods that swept across the Nepal-Tibet border, an urgent, multinational rescue operation is underway to reach more than 600 hydropower project workers trapped in a network of mud-choked tunnels along Nepal’s Trishuli River, as anxious families hold out fading hope that their loved ones will be pulled alive from the debris.

As of Monday, Nepalese Army teams leading the search have turned to controlled explosives to blast through rock and debris on the collapsed hillside to clear access routes to the tunnel network, after which rescue crews pump compressed air into the trapped space to sustain any possible survivors. Disaster management officials have confirmed the overall death toll from the flood disaster has climbed to 939 in Nepal, with the official count of missing people revised upward to 3,925 – 592 of whom are foreign nationals. Roughly 14% of all missing people are workers employed at the damaged hydropower projects along the river, where 279 people have already been pulled to safety, according to Nepalese Prime Minister Balendra Shah.

The massive search and recovery effort is being jointly spearheaded by Chinese and Nepalese military teams, with specialized technical experts from India, South Korea and Australia also contributing expertise to the complex underground operation. The Trishuli River basin, located in Nepal’s mountainous northern region, is home to a suite of major hydropower projects that the country, which relies heavily on hydroelectric power for its energy supply, has spent decades developing. Officials confirmed at least 11 operational and under-construction hydropower projects suffered severe damage when the floodwaters hit.

For families waiting at the operation’s perimeter, every passing minute feels like an eternity, and many have criticized the pace of the rescue for being unacceptably slow. “I still have a 50% hope that he is alive because there is an oxygen system inside,” Sita Pandey, whose husband was working in the plant when the floods hit, told Nepalese daily newspaper Kantipur. Anushila Bhandari, wife of 33-year-old missing engineer Aurus Bhandari, shared her desperate plea with BBC Nepali: “I wish we could find him. I wish he would come home.” Jiban Khadka, who has a relative trapped in the tunnel network, echoed the widespread frustration: “The longer it takes, the more our hope dies. This operation must move much faster because every second is meaningful to us. It’s a frustratingly slow operation.”

Rescue teams made limited progress on Monday, when one search team managed to advance into a tunnel leading to one of the hydropower plants, only to withdraw after finding no signs of trapped workers. Air pumping operations into accessible tunnel segments began over the weekend, but family members argue that life-saving efforts should have been launched far earlier.

Australian tunneling expert Arnold Dix, who is advising Nepalese authorities on the search remotely, explained the extraordinary challenges rescuers face in navigating the transformed landscape. “The actual signature of them has gone – everything is just missing. It looks like a lunar landscape,” Dix told BBC Radio 4’s *World at One*. The former head of the International Tunneling Association added that massive boulders, some larger than residential homes, have blocked all original access points, forcing crews to rely on controlled blasts to clear paths: “I’ve never seen that before in my life. It’s just an extraordinary operation.” Even amid the logistical hurdles, Dix remains cautiously optimistic that some survivors may be found, noting that the enclosed tunnel environment could have provided protection from the fast-moving floodwaters.

Downstream in Nepal’s Chitwan District, the tragedy has moved to the grim phase of recovering and identifying victims. Floodwaters carried nearly 300 bodies to the district’s riverbanks, overwhelming local authorities who have been forced to arrange makeshift burials for unidentified remains, as there are not enough refrigeration units to store all the corpses. Local chief district officer Ganesh Aryaal told BBC Nepali: “We don’t have enough freezers here… We had to choose this last alternative of temporary burial system. We are really overwhelmed.” Medical teams and volunteers have begun extracting DNA samples from the remains to enable future identification, so relatives can claim their loved ones once testing is complete.

Across the border in Tibet, Chinese state media reports a death toll of 16, with another 546 people listed as missing. Footage and first-hand accounts of the disaster have been heavily censored on Chinese digital platforms, and authorities have issued administrative penalties – ranging from fines and warnings to short-term detentions – for social media users who speculate that the actual casualty count is far higher than the official figure. Nepalese authorities have also taken steps to curb what they classify as misinformation, ordering the removal of social media content that spreads unconfirmed claims about the flood disaster.

To date, Prime Minister Shah confirmed that a total of 11,379 people have been rescued from flood-affected areas across Nepal, and that rescue operations have been intensified to accelerate progress for the trapped hydropower workers.

In the wake of devastating flash floods that swept through parts of Nepal, leaving a trail of destruction and loss in their path, grieving relatives of those still unaccounted for refuse to abandon the belief that their family members may still be alive. Weeks after floodwaters rushed through communities, destroying homes, sweeping away infrastructure and claiming dozens of confirmed lives, the search operation for missing persons continues, slowed by challenging terrain and lingering hazards in flood-stricken regions. For many families, waiting for official updates has turned into an agonizing limbo, yet even amid widespread despair, many cling to small sparks of optimism. “I haven’t lost my hope,” one relative shared, a sentiment echoed by dozens of other families who continue to comb affected areas, ask local residents for any sightings, and wait by emergency response centers for any news that could bring their loved ones home. Aid organizations and local rescue teams have persisted in search efforts, expanding operations to hard-to-reach river valleys and remote settlements that were cut off immediately after the disaster. While rising death tolls have cast a shadow over the entire region, the unwavering hope of these families has become a quiet testament to the endurance of human connection in the face of natural catastrophe.