OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 31 December 2002 — Israeli troops killed four Palestinians yesterday as a leading Israeli rights group said the army beat Palestinians and use them as human shields to fire on stone-throwing crowds.
Israeli military sources said one of the Palestinians trying to enter Israel was killed in an exchange of fire after he cut through a wire fence surrounding the Gaza Strip and shot at an Israeli patrol.
In a statement, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades identified the man as Ibrahim Faraj, 20, from the Nusseirat refugee camp near Gaza City. In the West Bank, a Palestinian was killed by Israeli troops after his car rammed a stationary army jeep. Palestinian security officials identified him as Assem Massad, 37, a schoolteacher from the village of Faqqua, 10 km northeast of Jenin. They said the collision was an accident. In Nablus, south of Jenin, a 20-year old man was also shot dead. Another Palestinian Imran Abu Ramdieh was beaten to death by troops in Hebron.
Meanwhile, an Israeli rights group yesterday said the army beat Palestinians and use them as human shields to fire on stone-throwing crowds, in a report on an incident in Hebron three weeks ago. The group B’Tselem, which lobbies for Palestinian rights in the occupied territories, said four soldiers beat five Hebron residents, aged 19 to 24, in a barber shop in the southern West Bank city on Dec. 3.
“Among other things, the soldiers forcibly cut the hair of two of the young men, beat them, and maltreated them and the three other Palestinians. The soldiers also used three of their victims as human shields, firing from over their shoulders at stone-throwers,” it said.
While calling for an immediate army inquiry, B’Tselem said “this grave incident is only the tip of the iceberg. Cases of ‘punishment’ and abuse of Palestinians by (Israeli) soldiers in the occupied territories occur daily.”
In other incidents the Israeli Army destroyed the houses of two Palestinians who killed four students in a nearby settlement close to the southern West Bank city of Hebron, witnesses said.
Soldiers used bulldozers and dynamite to raze the homes in Durra of Mohammed Shahin and Ahmed Ayed Al-Fakih.
