Jerusalem24 – A Palestinian child has succumbed to injuries sustained when he was shot by Israeli forces during a military raid on Jenin in the occupied West Bank nearly two weeks ago.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced the death of 12-year-old Mahmoud Mohammad Khalil Samoudi on Monday afternoon.
According to the Ministry, Mahmoud was shot in the abdomen with live ammunition during a large-scale Israeli army invasion of Jenin which killed four Palestinians and injured 44 others.
Large-scale invasion
During the invasion on 28 September, confrontations erupted across Jenin’s refugee camp as Israeli forces besieged a house belonging to Raed Khazem’s father Nidal Khazem. Raed Khazem was the perpetrator of a shooting attack that killed three Israelis and wounded 15 others in a bar in Tel Aviv in April.
The Israeli army announced that the aim of the operation was to capture Raed’s brother Abd Al-Rahman Khazem, whom the army accuses of shooting at an army bulldozer in the area of the Jalameh checkpoint, north of Jenin, earlier in September.
According to eyewitnesses and video documentation, Israeli forces aimed an anti-tank missile at the house during the siege. The Israeli military has been making increasing use of rockets and missiles in drawn-out raids and sieges across the West Bank and particularly Jenin, as well as drones.
Heavy toll for Palestinian children
Mahmoud is the fourth child killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank this week and the twenty-eighth in 2022, in addition to 7-year-old Rayyan Suliman who died after Israeli soldiers gave pursuit to schoolchildren in the village of Taqu’ near Bethlehem on 29 September.
Over one quarter of the 105 Palestinians shot and killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank in this year are children, and 42 hailed from the city of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces shot and killed four Palestinian children in less than 24 hours on Friday and Saturday.
