Israeli army used 3 Palestinian children as human shields during raid on West Bank: Rights group

A Geneva-based rights group said on Sunday that Israeli forces used three Palestinian children as "human shields" during their raid on the Tulkarm refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank on May 5 and 6.

Defense for Children International documented testimonies from three children who described similar conditions and assaults while serving as "human shields" by the Israeli forces.

The statement explained that “the soldiers forced them to walk in front of them in the buildings and alleys of the camp, searched homes, and demanded that residents evacuate. In two cases, the soldiers put their rifles on the shoulders of two children and fired shots.”

Karim, 13, said about 30 Israeli soldiers stormed his family's apartment and detained them in a room.

According to the rights group, “the soldiers forced him to walk in front of them inside the apartment, opened the doors of the rooms, and entered them before the soldiers."

“They also took him to the staircase of the building, accompanied by a large police dog, and as they walked, one of the soldiers put his rifle on the right shoulder of the child and fired two shots towards one of the apartment's doors,” the boy said.

“I was crying and trembling with fear, and whenever I pleaded with the soldiers, they would shout in my face and ask me to be quiet,” Karim added.

The incident did not end with them being used as human shields, as Karim described: “Three soldiers brutally beat me with black sticks. They hit me on my lower limbs and back for about five minutes, and they kept telling me that I was a saboteur.”

In another testimony documented by the group, Mohammad, 12, said: “One of the soldiers put his rifle on my shoulder and fired several shots towards the ceiling at the beginning of the building's staircase (where they live).”

He added, “I stayed with them for about two hours. I was crying from extreme fear, terror, and pain. I pleaded with them a lot in vain, and when we reached the fourth floor, the soldiers searched me and forced me to take off my upper clothes.”

The assaults were also repeated with another Palestinian boy Ibrahim, 14, who said: “They asked me to walk in front of them in the alleys of the Al-Sawalmeh neighborhood in the camp, and they were hiding in the alleyways and asking me to show the way.”

The human rights group confirmed that “the detention of children as human shields is a war crime committed by the occupation army. Since 2000, occupation soldiers have used 34 children as human shields in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

In a previous report published on the occasion of Children's Day on April 5, the group said it had documented "the martyrdom of 114 children since Oct. 7 last year, 33 of them since the beginning of this year."

As of 1845GMT, Israel had not issued an official response to the human rights group's statement.

Tensions have been running high across the West Bank since Israel launched a deadly military offensive against the Gaza Strip, where more than 35,000 people have been killed following a Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023.

Nearly 500 Palestinians have since been killed and around 4,900 others injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied territory, according to the Health Ministry.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which in January issued an interim ruling that ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala​​​​​​​