Report: Israeli Occupation Fired Into Civilians during Deadly Raid on Nablus & Its Refugee Camp

Report: Israeli Occupation Fired Into Civilians during Deadly Raid on Nablus & Its Refugee Camp

A 3D virtual rendering shows the positioning of civilians in Nablus on Feb. 22, as an Israeli armored vehicle with grates on its windows slows in front of a short wall and continues to shoot. (Imogen Piper/The Washington Post)

Israeli military troops raiding Nablus in an armored vehicle last month fired repeatedly at unarmed Palestinian civilians sheltering between a mosque and a clinic after a Feb. 22 raid in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus and its refugee camp, killing two people, including a teenager, and wounding three others, according to witnesses and a visual reconstruction of the event by The Washington Post.

The Post spoke with two witnesses to the shooting, obtained previously unpublished videos of the incident from a bystander and the Israel Defense Forces, and had audio experts analyze the gunfire. A Post reporter collected visual evidence at the scene to reconstruct the incident using 3D modeling software, and reporters also reviewed more than 30 videos filmed in Nablus that day.

The Post reconstruction shows that, while responding to what they claimed was a gunman, Israeli forces fired at least 14 times from inside their armored vehicle as it moved down a street and then came to a halt next to a short wall behind which the civilians huddled. The Israelis continued firing even after those people would have been visible from the vehicle’s windows, the analysis shows.

Israeli forces killed at least 11 people during and after the raid and wounded 102, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The raid came amid a rise in deadly Israeli military incursions unseen in the occupied West Bank since the end of the most recent Palestinian uprising in 2005.

Recent shootings of civilians by Israeli forces have alarmed human rights and advocacy groups, several of which called the events a result of soldiers being given impunity for unlawful violence against Palestinian civilians.

Israeli forces killed 71 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 13 children, between Jan. 1 and March 7, according to the last available figures provided by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Israeli forces killed 146 Palestinians in the West Bank in 2022, and 75 in 2021.

Short Link : https://prc.org.uk/en/news/5586