A young Palestinian man shot and illegally captured by Israeli forces after a raid into his family home north of the occupied West Bank, died two days later in an Israeli detention center, rights groups reported.
The Commission of Detainees’ and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) announced in a joint statement on Saturday that 30-year-old Walid Ahmad Khalifa sustained fatal gunshot wounds after Israeli troops stormed his family home at the al-Ain refugee camp in Nablus last Thursday.
His family members said Khalifa, injured, was taken away from the residence on a stretcher while calling out for his loved ones.
They added that the Palestinian youth was conscious and aware during his detention, highlighting the traumatic circumstances of the incident.
The two Palestinian prisoners’ rights groups condemned Khalifa’s death as part of a systematic targeting of his family.
They said his brother Amir was assassinated by Israeli forces in August 2023, and his other brother, Khaled, is being held in administrative detention, without charge or trial.
They stated that Khalifa’s killing is yet another example of Israel’s long-standing pattern of violence against Palestinians, exacerbated by the ongoing genocidal war in Gaza and brutalities elsewhere in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The rights groups held the occupying Israeli regime fully responsible for Khalifa’s death and appealed to international human rights organizations to take action.
They underlined the urgent need for these organizations to fulfill their roles, and address Israel’s alarming impunity that has allowed such horrendous acts to proliferate.
More than 700 people, including 160 children, have been killed and thousands more injured in Israeli raids and settler attacks across the occupied West Bank since the war on Gaza began.
In August, Israel launched the largest raids in the West Bank in more than two decades, targeting Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas in particular, with hundreds of ground troops advancing in bulldozers and armored vehicles, supported by fighter jets and drones that dropped bombs.
Since October 7, at least 41,586 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have also been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip during the regime’s genocidal war.