Ramallah, 20-05-08: Israeli soldiers shot 16-year-old Fihmeh Abd Al-Jawwad Ad-Dardouk at the notorious Huwwara checkpoint near Nablus at 20:30 on Monday night, and prevented ambulances and medical teams from reaching the boy as he lay bleeding to death on the ground. He died some 30 minutes later. The Israeli military held the boy‘s body for 2 hours after the killing, finally allowing Palestinian medical teams to access the site of the shooting at around 22:30.
Eyewitness reports together with a testimony from the boy‘s father confirm that Fihmeh was carrying a bag and a mobile phone with an earpiece. As he approached the checkpoint, he was ordered by Israeli soldiers to lift his shirt. When he did so, they shot him 4 times at a range of 1.5 metres. He was hit in the face, chest and abdomen.
The Israeli military have reported that Fimeh was shot when soldiers suspected that he was wearing an explosive belt.
"This is simply not true," said Dr. Ghassan Hamdan of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in Nablus. "The boy was wearing a mobile phone earpiece with a wire that dangled down to his mobile phone. If the soldiers really believed that he was wearing an explosive belt, would they have shot him at a range of 1.5 metres, risking a massive explosion? The Israeli military is trying to find an excuse for why it killed an innocent child and then left him to bleed to death on the ground."
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, underlined that the killing of Palestinian children by the Israeli military is the rule rather than the exception, pointing out that 62 children have been killed by the Israeli military since the Annapolis meeting last November.
"The silence of the international community fuels the culture of impunity within the Israeli military," said Dr. Barghouthi. "There must be accountability for the murder of Fihmeh. Past Israeli military investigations in similar cases have been nothing more than whitewashes. The commander of the checkpoint and their soldiers must be prosecuted abroad under the universal jurisdiction principle."