A young Gazan boy dubbed “Amir,” who traveled to a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution site and was reported as having been killed by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in May, has been found alive hiding out with his mother.
Both were safely extracted from the Gaza Strip earlier this month, though the location has not been disclosed for their security.
The boy, whose full name was later discovered to be Abdul Rahim Muhammad Hamden, nicknamed Abboud, and who is 8 years old but will turn 9 in October, appeared with his mother, Najlaa, at GHF Secure Distribution Site (SDS) 3 late last month in a heavy disguise to avoid detection, a GHF representative involved in the operation confirmed to Fox News Digital.
An extensive internal operation by the GHF was launched to uncover the identity of the boy in late July after a former GHF employee, Anthony Aguilar, a 25-year veteran of the U.S. Army and retired Green Beret Lt. Col. turned alleged “whistleblower,” gave a series of explosive interviews in which he said a 10-year-old boy he called Amir had been killed by IDF forces after leaving a GHF aid site on May 28.
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In his account, Aguilar showed images taken using his cellphone of the boy approaching himself and another contractor clutching bags of food and barefoot.
The former Green Beret turned GHF contractor for UG Solutions — a subcontractor of the GHF which received $30 million in U.S. government funding to support its “critical work” — described to multiple outlets an emotional encounter he had had with the Palestinian child, in which he claimed the boy had kissed his hand, touched Aguilar’s face, and thanked him for the supplies of rice and lentils he had found.
But the footage taken by Aguilar and handed over to GHF officials before it was obtained by Fox News Digital, did not show this interaction ever took place.
The GHF contested Aguilar’s account on several fronts and pointed out the hand the boy kissed was that of Aguilar’s colleague standing to his left, which the footage also showed.
When asked by Fox News Digital why he said the boy engaged with him in this manner despite what the footage shows, he maintained his story and said, “Amir kissed my right hand. He kissed my forehead, too. He thanked us and told us he was very hungry and thankful.”
In multiple interviews with various outlets, Aguilar described how the boy then returned to the group where other Palestinians were gathered at the distribution site before they were then dispersed by GHF contractors through the use of pepper spray, tear gas, stun grenades and bullets fired into the air, forcing them to flee the compound.
However, Fox News Digital was told that the GHF did not yet have access to non-lethal arms in the early days of the operations, according to a GHF colleague who was aware of Aguilar’s position at SDS 3 on May 28.
Additionally, Aguilar claimed that once the Palestinian civilians had been pushed out of the SDS center, IDF forces then opened fire on the crowd and killed “Amir,” along with other Palestinians. He reiterated this claim in an interview late last month in which he had told Dialogue Works that the boy had received a “shot to the torso, a shot to the leg — dead.”
But the GHF challenged Aguilar’s story — including the location of where he claimed the event had occurred.
In one of his first accounts of the incident on July 29 to Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Aguilar claimed the killing happened first outside GHF aid site SDS 1 before telling MSNBC on Aug. 2 that the shooting happened near SDS 2, and then telling Dialogue Works last month the events had occurred outside SDS 3.
On Sept. 9, Chris Hayes gave an update on the report, telling viewers that the boy who was reported dead was, in fact, found to be alive. He said NBC producers had confirmed that the boy was now out of Gaza in an unnamed country.
Multiple GHF sources confirmed that no such incident was reported at or outside SDS 1 or SDS 3, and SDS 2 was not yet even operational on May 28.
Fox News Digital confirmed in speaking with multiple sources that Aguilar was on SDS 3 on May 28.
In comments to Fox News Digital, Aguilar said, “I sincerely, and with bated breath and joy, hope that Amir is alive. I’ve always said as much. I have been in contact with his family and others, and Amir’s family is not aware that he is alive, only that he is ‘gone.’
“I have always said that due to GHF and IDF restrictions from UG S[olutions] personnel moving beyond the concentration camp style corals extending from the North entrance, that I was NOT, say again, NOT able to verify Amir’s death,” he said. “But I did in fact see Palestinians gunned down by IDF machine gun fire at the intersection of the SDS 3 exit and the military corridor, north of SDS 3, where an IDF Merkava tank was located.”
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Abboud’s stepmother also later told the GHF that the boy hadn’t gone missing until July 28, two months after Aguilar said he had been killed.
Abboud ran away to be with his birth mother on July 28 amid a rift with his stepmother’s family, whose custody he was put in following the death of his father, per Palestinian law.
A GHF representative involved in the operation explained the search to find Abboud became not only a matter necessary to uncover what allegedly happened on May 28, but because there was increasing concern regarding threats posed by Hamas as traction picked up around the story.
The official explained that Hamas had a vested interest in making sure this child was not found, as it would discredit Aguilar’s story that a Palestinian boy had been gunned down by Israeli forces outside a GHF site.
Ultimately, the GHF were able to locate the boy and his birth mother by speaking with local Palestinians and later, a family member who agreed to speak with the team before connecting them with Najlaa.
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She then brought Abboud to the GHF site so that she, her son and four other male family members whose identities Fox News Digital has agreed to conceal, could be extracted from the Gaza Strip, after at least one of the male family members received direct threats from the Hamas terrorist network.
In an interview shared with Fox News Digital, Najlaa is seen sitting with Abboud and another young male, who was also set to be extracted with them, speaking with GHF officials.
In the video, which Fox News Digital did not post to protect multiple identities, Abboud refers to Najlaa as his “mama” and, according to a translation of the comments, he says he is happy to be with her while smiling and sitting next to her.
The identities of Abboud, his mother and his relatives were verified by GHF using facial recognition software that compared the images of the boy with those captured by Aguilar.
Facial recognition software, biometric data and the death certificate of Abboud’s father were used by GHF to verify the family members’ identities and relationships, and were also shared with Fox News Digital.
Abboud also brought the shirt he was wearing in the footage taken by Aguilar, which is what the former GHF contractor said the boy was wearing when he was allegedly gunned down.
Aguilar did not respond to Fox News Digital regarding the intact shirt, and said, “The new pictures are not Amir.”
When pressed on where specifically he thought there were discrepancies in the images of the boy, he said, “Amir in my photos had a scar on his left clavicle. The boy featured by GHF does not. The Amir in my photos from SDS 3, does not have a scar on the right side of his forehead as the GHF’s photos show.”
The GHF representative confirmed that the boy’s scars were in fact used to verify his identity.
“I believe that is a boy of similar appearance,” Aguilar said, noting he believes the outcome of the investigation “is a lie.”
The GHF spokesperson for the organization, Chapin Fay, called Aguilar’s story regarding the boy and his alleged murder by the IDF “false” during a press conference earlier this month.
Aguilar told Fox News Digital that the GHF statements made against him during a July 29 press conference were “libel and slanderous.”
Fay described him as a “disgruntled former employee” who was “terminated for cause” after he engaged in “volatile conflicts with staff and erratic behavior.”
According to text messages shared with Fox News Digital, Aguilar also did not handle being removed from his role well, and threatened in a text exchange with a GHF official that he “could be your best friend, or your worst nightmare” if they didn’t “put [him] back to work.”
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David Panzer, counsel for UG Solutions, echoed this belief in a statement he gave on July 29 in which he said, “Mr. Aguilar was terminated from his contract with UG Solutions on June 13, 2025, due to poor performance, volatile conflicts with staff, and erratic behavior.
“Since termination, Mr. Aguilar has spread a false narrative to media outlets around the world, all at the same time begging UG Solutions to hire him back,” Panzer added. “Mr. Aguilar’s activities in the last several weeks make clear that he’s making good on his threats to, in his own words…be UG Solutions’s ‘worst nightmare’ if they didn’t hire him back.”
Panzer said Aguilar’s comments “raise[d] substantial questions of motive.”
