Israel is carrying out summary executions of Palestinians, Amnesty International has confirmed. Sometimes it lets injured Palestinians bleed to death.
The human rights group says it has “documented in depth at least four incidents in which Palestinians were deliberately shot dead by Israeli forces when they posed no imminent threat to life, in what appear to have been extra-judicial executions.”
Amnesty's condemnation of what it called a “clear pattern” of such summary killings came as the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces this month rose to at least 61. Ten Israelis have died in the same period.
On October 28, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian who they claimed had attempted to stab one of their soldiers at a checkpoint near the Tel Rumeida settlement in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.
But the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) said one of its members in Hebron saw the man being shot when he was two metres away from Israeli soldiers. “I am 100% sure he was unarmed,” the witness said. “I saw the two soldiers creeping slowly along the road outside our apartment window with their guns cocked, so I looked down the street to see why.
“I saw an unarmed man walking normally towards the soldiers and suddenly they shot.”
[Abridged from Electronic Intifada.]
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