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Witness Saw Palestinians "Executed" by Israeli Soldiers: Washington Post
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Palestinian medic who saw Israeli soldiers firing towards the ground after a gunbattle on Tuesday and later saw three Palestinian bodies with close-range bullet wounds to the head told
The Washington Post that the soldiers executed them.
Israel firmly denied Palestinians were executed, saying that the three died in the gunbattle, the
Post said.
In an article Thursday, a Post correspondent described the experience of Palestinian medic Dalya Diab, whose account of the Palestinians' wounds was corroborated by two other medics and two ambulance drivers, as well as a pathologist who later examined the corpses.
Diab arrived at the scene near the village of Tell, near Nablus in the West Bank, as gunfire between Palestinians and Israeli troops was diminishing, the article said. As she helped a dying Israeli officer to a vehicle, she "glanced up the hill" and saw the group of Israeli soldiers standing together and firing toward the ground.
Afterwards, Diab said, an Israeli officer who had earlier told her that three Palestinians - two of them wounded - had been involved in the battle then told her that "the three terrorists were already dead."
The chief pathologist in Nablus, Mazen Shabaro, told the Post correspondent, "The bullets to the head were [shot] from less than five meters, and they caused the deaths."
Israeli military spokesmen, however, said that during the 20-minute gunbattle after an ambush of Israeli troops, Israeli reinforcements arrived and shot at the Palestinians from a distance of about 40 yards, the
Post said.
"This was a serious exchange of fire," Capt. Jacob Dallal, an army spokesman, was quoted in the
Post article as saying. "The Palestinians fired at least 70 bullets. These are gunmen, combatants who are fully armed, preparing an ambush, attacking a routine patrol and killing one of the members of the patrol. . . . All were members of terrorist groups."
Dallal said the three were substantially armed and were firing on the Israeli troops, who had to keep firing back.
But Shabaro told the Post that although the three bodies had multiple gunshot wounds that appeared to have been fired from a distance, the fatal wounds were those made at close range, which could be distinguished by burn marks around the wound.
And the article also said that journalists led to the scene later by Diab and an ambulance driver found "skull fragments, brain matter and patches of blood" at the spot where Diab said the soldiers had been firing at the ground.
According to a November 6 release by the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS), Israeli soldiers prevented the medical team from approaching the three injured Palestinians.
The report confirms Diab's account to the Post of the medics being told that there were injured Palestinians, and of the medics waiting while Diab helped the mortally injured Israeli officer.
Then, the report says, "seven Israeli soldiers approached the injured and bleeding Palestinians and fired at them, killing all three. PRCS medics observed this."
The PRCS condemned the action as a war crime, saying it deplored "this criminal behavior clearly in contradiction of international laws."
The director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was visiting the West Bank and Gaza Strip Wednesday, and he backed the PRCS account of Tuesday's deaths, according to the
Post.
"It is something that is totally unacceptable," Paul Grossrieder, told journalists in Ramallah in the West Bank. "It is really barbarian to do such things on injured people who should be taken care of by nurses and ambulances."
Grossreider said in the Post article that the ICRC would take steps to improve monitoring in the Occupied Territories, including increasing staff presence, as well as filing a complaint with Israeli authorities about the incident, which he said was "among the worst violations one can imagine from a humanitarian point of view."
Since the beginning of the Intifada, or uprising, in September of 2000, international, Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups have condemned the use of "excessive" or "lethal" force by Israeli troops in putting down Palestinian protests.
In a report by the Israeli daily Ha'aretz this summer, reporter Amira Hass listed the inequalities of power between the two sides, comparing the "stones… Molotov cocktails… pistols, rifles… mortar shells, roadside bombs… [and] suicide bombers" of the Palestinians to the "F-16 fighter-bombers, helicopter gunships… tanks, armored troop carriers… bombs, tank and mortar shells, air-to-ground and ground-to-ground missiles" of the Israeli army.
But until now, there have never been "plausible accusations" of Israeli soldiers executing Palestinian prisoners, according to the
Post article.
Of the 965 people killed to date in the almost 14-month-long uprising, 755 are Palestinians and 188 are Israelis.
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