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| Qawasme's wife |
07/01/2011 Israeli occupation troops shot an old Palestinian man in Al-Khalil early Friday while he was sleeping in his bed. The man killed was identified as Amr Qawasme, 66.
Qawasme 's son said that "Israeli soldiers enter our house while my mother was praying so they put her in my disabled brother’s room, then they entered my father’s bedroom and shot him.
The soldiers left the house after they arrested the citizen Wael Mohammed Said Al-Bitar, who lives on the first floor in our house. "
"After the soldiers arrested Wael Bitar, we went into our house and were surprised to see our father dying in a pool of blood. We didn't hear any gun-fire, they must have used silencers," he explained. Qawasme’s son also said that they "immediately opened fire when they came into my father's room, without verifying his identity."
Medical sources said an old Palestinian man, who was reported to be an unarmed civilian, was brought dead to hospital with several bullet wounds to the upper part of his body.
An Israel military spokesperson expressed “regret” for the mistake of killing an innocent civilian who was not involved in any “terror activity”. "He was not a target, it was definitely not intentional," he said.
The Israeli army was raiding Al-Khalil to re-arrest six Hamas members that the Palestinian Authority had released only the day following an intervention from the emir of Qatar. The PA had taken the six into custody in September in a campaign to arrest Hamas activists after a drive-by shooting against Israeli settlers in the area.
Hamas movement said that it “holds the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank responsible, along with the occupation, for this crime,” Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri told reporters at a news conference in Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous escalation.”
In a separate development, Israeli warplanes have carried out three airstrike on the Gaza Strip, but there is no word yet on any possible casualties. Two of the air raids targeted the east of Gaza City and the third airstrike hit an area east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. The Israeli military has not commented on the attack so far.
[ 07/01/2011 - 12:33 PM ]
AL-KHALIL, (PIC)-- IOF troops kidnapped, Friday at dawn, five Palestinian men from the southern West Bank city of al-Khalil, only hours after being released from PA jails after spending 40 days on hunger strike reflecting a high degree of security coordination between Abbas’s militia and the IOF.
The wife of Wael al-Bitar told PIC that a large number of IOF troops raided their neighbourhood and entered her uncle’s flat and killed while he was asleep thinking that he was her husband.
“It seems they went by mistake to my uncle’s flat, they killed him and assaulted his family then forced them on the street,” she said.
She considered what has happened an exchange of roles between the PA and the Israeli occupation and held Mahmoud Abbas personally responsible for what happened and added: “let the whole world see what happened to us at the hands of Fatah’s authority and the [Israeli] occupation in the West bank.”
Local sources also informed the PIC correspondent that IOF troops raided at the same time all homes of the captives who were only released on Thursday evening from Abbas’s jails.
The sources said that as well as Wael al-Bitar, the IOF kidnapped Mohannad Neiroukh (who was unconscious), Majd Obaid, Ahmad al-Oweiwi and Wael al-Qawasmi.
The IOF action created a state of rage in the city with the people and the families of the kidnapped men holding Abbas’s authority full responsibile for what happened.
The PA had released six men after went on a hunger strike for 40 days to protest being kept in jail despite a court ruling over a year ago ordering their release.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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