Israel is accused of possible war crime after eight-year-old West Bank boy is ... trends now
A UN human rights official has said Israel may have committed a war crime following an investigation into the shooting of two Palestinian boys in the West Bank.
The two children, eight-year-old Adam al-Ghul and 15-year-old Basel Abu el-Wafa, were shot and killed by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in the city of Jenin in November.
Shocking CCTV footage of the incident in the West Bank - which is not controlled by Hamas - showed how the pair appeared to flee from a heavily armoured IDF convoy before being gunned down.
One bullet hit Adam in the back of the head, while Basel was shot twice in the chest.
The teenager can be seen struggling on the ground in apparent agony for at least half a minute before he died - but Adam was killed instantly when the Israeli round shattered through his skull.
Eight-year-old Adam al-Ghul was shot in the head by IDF soldiers in November in the West Bank city of Jenin
Basel Suleiman Tawfiq Abu Al-Wafa, 15, was also killed in the gunfire in November
CCTV footage shows the boy circled in red being shot during an Israeli military raid in Jenin
An unexploded Israeli missile lies among the rubble of a destroyed building in the north of Al Nusairat refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, 29 April 2024
More than 34,300 Palestinians and over 1,455 Israelis have been killed, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), since Hamas militants launched an attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip on 07 October 2023, and the Israeli operations in Gaza and the West Bank which followed it
In the days after the shooting last year, an official with the Palestinian Red Crescent said the children were standing on a side street of central Jenin's main thoroughfare - an area theoretically off limits to the Israeli military as it is under the sole control of the Palestinian Authority.
But the IDF convoy passed them after having been involved in an early morning raid in Jenin in which the Israeli military claimed it killed terrorists from Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The footage shows how the children were hit by gunfire from roughly 40-50 feet away.
The IDF claimed that Basel was holding an explosive device when he was shot, and officials at the time said the 'suspects hurled explosives toward IDF soldiers'.
The teenager can be seen holding something in his hand at the time of the shooting, but it is not clear what the object was.
The boys cannot be seen throwing anything at the IDF convoy in CCTV footage, and most of them appeared to be running away when the gunfire rang out.
Ben Saul, UN special rapporteur on human rights, said there was a possibility the IDF committed a war crime in killing the two boys upon reviewing materials provided by the BBC following an investigation into the incident.
The rapporteur pointed out that there may have been legal grounds for the IDF to deploy lethal force on Basel if he was in fact holding an explosive.
But he said there was no legal justification for the killing of eight-year-old Adam.
'This appears to be a violation of the International Humanitarian Law prohibitions on deliberately, indiscriminately or disproportionately attacking civilians, a war crime, and a violation of the human right to life,' Saul told the BBC.
The IDF maintains that the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the two boys are under review.
But there is little hope the investigation will turn up findings that could see the soldiers in question punished or reprimanded.
It comes as human rights group Amnesty International said in a recent report that there were several instances in which Israeli forces deployed disproportionate and unnecessary force against civilians in the West Bank, conducted unlawful killings, and denied medical assistance to those injured.
Though the bulk of Israel's military operations are unfolding in Gaza, the latest
