Israeli troops tied an injured Palestinian to a military vehicle during an operation in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, the army said on Sunday, admitting that the soldiers violated operational procedures.
Footage of the incident, which took place on Saturday, went viral and shows a man tied horizontally to the hood of a military jeep as it passes through a narrow alley.
Doctors identified the Palestinian as Mujahid Raed Abbadi, 24, who told AFP he lives in the Jenin refugee camp.
The military said a Palestinian was injured during an “anti-terrorist operation” to arrest wanted suspects in the Wadi Burqin area, between the city of Burqin and Jenin.
During an exchange of fire between troops and militants in the Jabriyat neighborhood of Burqin, a Palestinian was injured and detained, the military said in a statement.
The statement referred to him as a “suspect” but did not specify any charges against Abbadi, who doctors told AFP was being treated at Jenin’s Ibn Sina hospital rather than in Israeli custody.
The military said: “In violation of orders and standard operating procedures, the suspect was taken away by forces while strapped on top of a vehicle.”
He was later transferred to the Palestine Red Crescent for treatment, he said.
“The conduct of the forces in the video of the incident does not comply with the values of the IDF (military),” the statement said.
“The incident will be investigated and handled accordingly.”
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, suggested that troops were using Abbadi to protect themselves from gunfire.
“#HumanShielding in action,” Albanese wrote on social media platform X, sharing footage of the incident.
At the hospital, Abbadi said he was hit and injured while leaving his uncle’s house in Jabriyat.
“I tried to leave and go into the house, but they started shooting,” hitting him in the hand, Abbadi told AFP from his hospital bed.
‘Stepped on my head’
He said he fell to the ground in an area behind the military jeep and was hit once again, with a bullet piercing his leg.
According to Abbadi, rescue teams or doctors were unable to reach him for more than two hours as he lay on the ground.
“I started crawling” trying to escape as fighting continued around him, he said, before Israeli troops noticed him.
“When they (the soldiers) arrived, they stamped on my head and hit my face, injured leg and hand,” Abbadi recalled.
“They were laughing and joking as they hit me.”
The soldiers picked him up and threw him to the ground before tying him to the hood of the jeep, he said.
Bahaa Abu Hammad, the doctor treating Abbadi at Ibn Sina hospital, told AFP that “he has burns on his back, from his neck to his lower back” from being tied to the military jeep in the scorching summer heat.
Jenin has long been a stronghold of Palestinian militant groups, and the Israeli army routinely carries out attacks in the city and an adjacent refugee camp.
Violence in the West Bank, which had already increased before the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, has only increased since then.
At least 553 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli troops or settlers since the start of the war in Gaza, according to Palestinian officials.
Attacks carried out by Palestinians have killed at least 14 Israelis in the West Bank over the same period, according to an AFP count of official Israeli data.
The Gaza Strip has been ravaged by more than eight months of war since Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli figures. .
The militants took 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 41 who the army says are dead.
Since then, Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 37,598 people, most of them civilians, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-administered territory.
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