IDF gravely wounds Palestinian boy attempting to cross border fence
10-year-old Gazan boy hit by IDF fire after approaching Israel's border fence with Gaza, failing to heed soldiers' warnings.
A young Palestinian boy was shot by an IDF force on Sunday after approaching the security barrier between Gaza and Israel. He was hit and was evacuated to Sorokoa Medical Center in Be'er Sheva in grave condition.
The IDF stressed that the soldiers had performed the procedure for the arrest of a suspect nearing the fence but the 10-year-old boy did not respond to calls to halt his advance.
The youth, who was unarmed, was gravely wounded by gunfire. The IDF said it suspects the boy was sent as a scout by one of Gaza's terror factions to test the troops' level of alert and response times.
On Saturday evening, Palestinian reported that a youth sustained a serious head wound during clashes between Palestinians protestors and security forces in East Jerusalem's A-Tur nehiborhood.
Last Thursday, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy, Saleh Mahmoud, was taken to Al-Makassed hospital in East Jerusalem and later transferred to Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center after being shot in the face by a rubber bullet fired by Israeli police forces during clashes in the Isawiya neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
Last week, the IDF made good on its promise to investigate a controversial shooting from last May and said that in contradiction to initial IDF claims, live ammunition was used by security forces in a deadly shooting incident at Beitunia during Nakba Day protests in which two Palestinians were killed, an ongoing investigation into the case has revealed.
At issue is a clash between Israeli troops and Palestinian stone-throwers May 15 near the West Bank town of Beitunia, a few hundred meters from an Israeli military base, Ofer. On that day, Palestinians marked the anniversary of their uprooting in the war over Israel's 1948 creation by holding marches and protests in the West Bank and Gaza.
According to a source involved in the investigation, a security force was arrested for his role in the death of the protesters and another from the same unit was taken in for questioning.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a senior spokesman, said at the time that preliminary findings show forces fired only rubber-coated steel pellets, a standard means of crowd control, and did not use live fire.
