AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian man who was the father of five children, and injured his wife, earlier in April at a temporary checkpoint in the occupied West Bank.
Witnesses say the soldiers killed Mansour for no apparent reason, part of what rights groups say is a pattern of fatal shootings of Palestinians by Israeli forces.
“These kinds of things happen in Palestine almost every day, but you hope that it will never happen to you or your family,” said Imran Mansour, who witnessed the killing.
“Osama isn’t the first, nor will he be the last Palestinian who is killed in cold blood, for no reason, by the Israelis,” Imran said.
The soldiers' crime echoes that over the high-profile police killings of Black Americans in the United States.
Somaya, the widow of the deceased, says her husband took her to see a doctor in the early hours of April 6. On the drive back to their home village of Biddu they passed through the village of Bir Nabala, just outside Jerusalem al-Quds.
They saw Israeli troops and armored jeeps up ahead, a common sight in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces often carry out overnight arrest raids.
“I said ‘There’s a checkpoint, Osama, stop,'" she told the AP. "He said ‘I see it,’ and he stopped like the other cars.”
She said two soldiers came over to the car with their rifles pointed at them. One of them ordered Osama to shut off the ignition, and he complied. The soldier asked where they were from and what they were doing, and they told him, she said.
“He said 'Fine, OK, go.' So we started the car, we moved forward, and a second later they opened fire," she said. “I froze out of fear, with broken glass falling over my head and the sound of bullets. It was very scary."
She said the car veered back and forth. She called out to her husband to go faster, then saw that he was slumped between the seats and took the wheel until they reached some people who helped them get to a hospital.
“There was blood all over the floor, so much blood,” she said. “I was asking about Osama, I was crying out for him. They said he was in the operating room, for four hours he was in the operating room, and finally they said he had died.”
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem says it interviewed two witnesses who largely corroborated her account. Roy Yellin, a spokesman for the group, said the fact that Somaya was not arrested strongly indicates that the military did not think it was an attack.
B'Tselem has documented several similar incidents in recent years, in which Israeli forces said they opened fire to prevent car-ramming attacks, killing or wounding Palestinians, only to later back away from the claims without making arrests or pressing charges.
"There’s a very trigger-happy approach in the West Bank in which Palestinians are guilty until proven otherwise,” Yellin said.
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27 April 2021 - 08:19
News ID: 1135355
Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian man who was the father of five children, and injured his wife, earlier in April at a temporary checkpoint in the occupied West Bank.
