A children’s rights group has accused Israeli forces of stripping, humiliating, terrorising and detaining two Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, after shooting and killing their grandmother, according to Al Jazeera.
Defence for Children Palestine (DCIP) said seven-year-old Ibrahim Abu Ghali, and 13-year-old Omar Mohammed Dirar Zaben, were visiting their grandparents’ home on March 10, west of Jenin, when their grandmother was shot for going outside to listen for the morning call to prayer during an Israeli military raid.
Israeli soldiers then forced the two children to strip to their underwear at gunpoint, alongside their grandfather. Practically naked, the three had their hands bound with cable ties, and were held outdoors in the cold for about an hour before being pushed onto the floor or a military vehicle — still without clothes — and taken for interrogation.
“Forcing young children to strip, detaining them in degrading conditions, and subjecting them to psychological terror is a clear violation of international law and amounts to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” DCIP’s Ayed Abu Eqtaish said.
After nearly 12 hours of “arbitrary detention”, the children were put in the back of a military truck and taken home — still in their underwear — where they discovered their grandmother had been killed by the Israeli gunfire.
