Palestinian youth killed by Israeli troops in WB

The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported the atrocity on Monday, identifying the victim as a young male, who lost his life during a raid by the forces at Nablus’ Old City.

Reuters reported Israel’s paramilitary border police said undercover forces opened fire at Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus.

The agency claimed that the fatality was caused, when the forces confronted Palestinians, who were “hurling explosive devices” at the forces.

It also alleged that the skirmish erupted after the forces hunted down a “wanted” Palestinian.

The Palestinian resistance movement of the Islamic Jihad mourned the youth’s martyrdom in a statement, but did not identify him as one of its members.

Also on Monday, Israeli forces assaulted the al-Ain refugee camp in Nablus as well as the city of Bethlehem in the west-central part of the West Bank.

Israeli forces fired teargas canisters to disperse the Palestinians during the latter raid.

The developments come only two days after Israeli troops killed a young Palestinian and injured as many as 68 others, attacking the southern part of Nablus.

The Israeli regime occupied the West Bank in 1967 before starting to dot the Palestinian territory with illegal settlements and severely restricting the Palestinians’ freedom of movement there.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights also said in a report that the murder of Palestinian youth Jamil Abu Ayyash, 31, in the occupied West Bank village of Beita on Friday was a result of the excessive use of force by the Israeli occupation army, amounting to a war crime, WAFA news agency reported.

According to PCHR’s investigations, the Israeli occupation army directly targeted the Abu Ayyash in the head at a close range of 50 meters, without any justification or posing threat to the soldiers’ lives, which, according to the report, proves unjustifiable lenient shooting standards in the Israeli army in disregard of Palestinian civilians’ lives.

“These crimes reflect the excessive use of force in circumstances where there was no imminent threat to the soldiers’ lives and prove Israeli lenient shooting standards against the Palestinian civilians,” the report added.

PCHR urged the international community to act immediately to stop the Israeli crimes, and renewed its call on the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfill their obligations under Article 1; i.e. to prosecute persons alleged to commit grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and guarantee Palestinian civilians’ right to protection in the occupied Palestinian Territory.