NOVANEWS
Incident comes a day after Palestinian farmer killed in Gaza Strip.
Haaretz
A 16-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israel Defense Forces fire on Tuesday near the village of Budrus in the West Bank, Palestinian sources said.
According to the reports, the youth, Samir Awad, was shot four times and hit in his torso and legs.
Awad is the fourth Palestinian killed by IDF fire in recent days.
The IDF said there was an attempt to breach the separation barrier near Budrus on Tuesday morning. In response, soldiers shot at the suspect after warning him. The IDF added that it was investigating the incident.
Ayeed Mora, a member of the Budrus Popular Committee, told Haaretz that after school day was over, Samir and his friends went out to the fields outside the village. Mora said that near the separation barrier that Israel built, IDF soldiers ambushed the youths and opened fire. There was no just cause to open fire, he asserts.
“In recent days we feel an escalation by the army, which shoots at everything that approaches the fence, even if they are children,” Mora said. “Time and time again we hear of the claim that the young Palestinians provoked or hurled stones, but nothing justifies the shooting of live rounds at children.” Mora added that the IDF “shouldn’t speak of provocations, the fact they built the fence on our lands is provocation.”
The incident comes a day after Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian man in the Gaza Strip. Israel had no immediate comment Monday on the reported shooting of the man, who the Islamist Hamas-run Health Ministry said was a farmer, in the Gaza town of Beit Lahiya on the frontier with Israel.
Palestinian officials said a gunshot to the head had critically wounded 21-year-old Mustafa Abu Jarad. Doctors in the hospital at Shifa where he was treated said he had died of his injuries.
The Israel-Gaza frontier has been mostly calm since November when eight days of Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli air strikes killed 170 Palestinians and six Israelis.
Since then, four Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli troops along the Gaza border, most of them in an area Israel has deemed off-limits for several years, citing the risk of attacks on its soldiers.
