The Israeli army said on Sunday it had tied a wounded Palestinian to a military vehicle during a raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. The army admitted that soldiers had violated operational procedures.
Footage of the incident, which took place on Saturday, has gone viral, showing a man tied horizontally to the bonnet of a military jeep as it moves through a narrow lane.
Medics identified the Palestinian as Mujahid Raed Abbadi, 24, who told AFP he lives in the Jenin refugee camp.
The army said a Palestinian man was injured during an “anti-terrorism operation” carried out to arrest wanted suspects in the Wadi Burqin area, between the cities of Burqin and Jenin.
A Palestinian was injured and captured during a shootout between troops and militants in the Jabriyat area of Burqin, the army said in a statement.
The statement described him as a “suspect” but did not mention any charges against Abbadi. Doctors told AFP Abbadi was being treated at Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin and not in Israeli custody.
The army said: “In violation of orders and standard operating procedures, the suspect was tied to a vehicle and transported by the army.”
He was later transferred to the Palestinian Red Crescent for treatment.
“The conduct of the forces in the video of the incident is not in accordance with the IDF’s (military) values,” the statement said.
“The incident will be investigated and action will be taken accordingly.”
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, suggested that soldiers were using Abbadi to protect themselves from crossfire.
Albanese shared footage of the incident on social media platform X, writing: “#HumanShielding in action”.
At the hospital, Abbadi said he was attacked and injured when he left his uncle’s house in Jabriyat.
“I tried to run and go inside the house, but they started firing bullets”, Abbadi told AFP as he lay in a hospital bed, hitting him in the arm.
‘hit my head’
He said he fell to the ground behind the military jeep and was shot again, which grazed his leg.
According to Abbadi, rescue teams or doctors could not reach him for more than two hours as he lay on the ground.
He said fighting was going on around him, so he started crawling to try to escape, but was spotted by Israeli soldiers.
“When they (the soldiers) arrived they hit me on the head and injured my face, legs and arms,” Abbadi recalled.
“They were laughing and playing while they hit me.”
He said that the soldiers picked him up, threw him on the ground and then tied him to the bonnet of the jeep.
Bahaa Abu Hammad, the doctor treating Abbadi at Ibn Sina hospital, told AFP that he had “burns from his neck to his lower back” after being tied to a military jeep in the scorching heat.
Jenin has long been a stronghold of Palestinian militant groups, and Israeli forces regularly raid the town and the nearby refugee camp.
Violence in the West Bank, which was already high before the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, has escalated further since then.
At least 553 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the West Bank since the Gaza war began, according to Palestinian officials.
At least 14 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks in the West Bank over the same period, according to an AFP count based on Israeli official figures.
The Gaza Strip has been in the grip of war for more than eight months since Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, resulting in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on Israeli official figures.
The militants took 251 people hostage, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, 41 of whom the military says are dead.
Israel’s military assault on Gaza has so far killed at least 37,598 people, the vast majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
