Israeli soldiers 'deliberately killed boy'

A British volunteer said today she witnessed an Israeli soldier shoot dead a Palestinian teenager – deliberately and without provocation.

Israeli military officials said 13-year-old Baha Albahsh set himself alight while handling a fire bomb in the West Bank, but a Palestinian doctor said he was killed by a gunshot in the chest.

Londoner Ewa Jasiewics, 24, a member of the International Solidarity Movement, said Albahsh tagged along with her group as usual on Sunday as they walked in Nablus to observe Israeli troops’ behaviour toward youngsters breaking a military curfew to get to school.

“An armoured personnel car came and stopped on the left of the street,” Jasiewics said.

“A soldier popped up from inside. I saw him with his rifle and he aimed at some kids on the street. There was no stone-throwing or shooting going on at the time.”

Jasiewics said that in the month she has spent with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip she has often seen soldiers train their gunsights on people without further incident; this time was different.

“This soldier fired,” she said. “I saw Baha lying on the ground, with blood coming out of his chest...I saw blood oozing from his mouth. We called an ambulance and the ambulance came and took him.”

“It wasn’t accidental,” Jasiewics said. “The soldiers decided to kill him.”

There was no official army statement on the incident, but military sources said an army patrol saw a child lighting a firebomb which then set him aflame. There was no gunfire, the sources said, adding that the soldiers saw the burned boy taken away by ambulance.

A doctor at Rafidia hospital in Nablus said Albahsh was killed by a bullet which entered his body at the shoulder and lodged in his chest.

Nablus, the West Bank’s largest city, has been under almost constant curfew since June 21 when Israel slammed the territory into lockdown to prevent Palestinian militants from attacking Israeli civilians.