Israeli commandos burst into hospital to shoot dead a Palestinian
Abdullah Shalaldah, 28, was shot at least three times in the head and upper body while visiting his cousin. Photo by ActiveStills.
Israeli army unit storms hospital and kills Palestinian
Israeli commandos shoot dead Palestinian and arrest his wounded cousin in raid on West Bank hospital.
By Al Jazeera
November 13, 2015
An undercover Israeli military unit has killed a 28-year-old Palestinian man while storming the al-Ahli hospital in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.
An estimated 21 undercover officers – known as the Mustaarabin – shot dead Abdullah al-Shalaldeh before dawn on Thursday morning while raiding the hospital room of the victim’s cousin, Azzam, according to a statement by the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health.
The Israeli commandos had come to question Azzam, who was in a surgery unit of the hospital awaiting an operation after being shot by an Israeli settler last month, when they shot dead Abdullah.
Azzam, who has been accused of stabbing an Israeli man, was subsequently arrested.
Dr Jihad Shawar, director of al-Ahli Hospital, told Al Jazeera the Israeli unit entered the facility at about 3am local time. Much of the raid was captured on CCTV cameras and posted online.
The undercover agents were disguised to blend in with the local Palestinian population, including one disguised as a pregnant woman.
CCTV footage provided by al-Ahli Hospital shows undercover Israeli forces during their early morning raid
“They headed straight towards the surgery ward, where Azzam al-Shalaldeh was being treated,” Shawar told Al Jazeera.
When Azzam’s cousin Abdullah came out of the bathroom, he was shot multiple times in the head and body.
A handout image grab taken from CCTV footage obtained from the Al-Ahli hospital in Hebron purportedly shows undercover Israeli agents pushing a patient in a wheelchair — presumed to be Palestinian Azzam Shalaldeh
“They kept the hospital’s medical crew as hostages at gun point. They arrested the patient and took him away, leaving his cousin [to] bleed to death,” Shawar added.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Issa Amro, coordinator of the Hebron-based Youth Against Settlements activist group, said that “people are extremely angry because of what happened in the hospital”.
Hebron has been a focal point during the latest bout of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, with Israeli forces employing harsh measures.
“You don’t feel safe at home, in the street, in the hospital or in the mosque,” Amro said. “You are a target only because you’re a Palestinian.”
Shada Haddad, a 25-year-old resident of Hebron’s Tel Rumeida neighbourhood, said many people are scared to leave their homes.
“Any mother here wonders if her son will go out and not come back home,” she told Al Jazeera.
Recent violence
Amnesty International called for an investigation into the raid.
“The fact that Abdullah Shalaldeh was shot in the head and upper body suggests this was an extrajudicial execution,” said Philip Luther, the director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa programme.
Luther added that the killing came amid “a disturbing pattern of similar recent incidents by Israeli forces in the West Bank which warrant urgent investigation”.
Since October 1, Israeli troops or armed settlers have killed at least 81 Palestinians, including unarmed bystanders, protesters and suspected attackers. Ten Israelis have also been killed by Palestinians in stabbing or shooting incidents.
The latest unrest in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories was triggered as Israeli incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound – the third holiest site for Muslims – have increased in frequency during recent months.
Although Jewish Israelis are formally banned from praying at the compound – which they also consider holy and call the Temple Mount – they are accompanied by security forces when they visit.
Israeli police regularly clash with Palestinian worshippers at the compound, often using rubber-coated steel bullets, tear gas and stun grenades against them.
Many Palestinians fear that Israel will attempt to partition the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound into separate areas of worship for Jews and Muslims.
The Israeli government says it trying to maintain the status quo at the compound, but several members of the Knesset have close ties to hardline right-wing groups and activists who advocate an Israeli takeover of the holy site.
The Mustaarabin, an undercover unit of Arabic-speaking fighters in the Israeli military, recently gained media attention when a video surfaced of them infiltrating a protest, beating people and pulling their weapons on Palestinian demonstrators before arresting several of them.
Amnesty: Hospital killing in Hebron an ‘extrajudicial execution’
By Ma’an news
November 13, 2015
Abdullah Shalaldah, 28, was shot at least three times in the head and upper body while visiting his cousin.
BETHLEHEM– Amnesty International said on Thursday that the killing of a 28-year-old Palestinian by undercover Israeli forces during a raid on the al-Ahli hospital may amount to an “extrajudicial execution.”
Abdullah Shalaldah, 28, was shot at least three times in the head and upper body while visiting his cousin 20-year-old Azzam Azmi Shalaldah, who was a patient at the hospital.
“The fact that Abdullah Shalaldah was shot in the head and upper body suggests this was an extrajudicial execution, adding to a disturbing pattern of similar recent incidents by Israeli forces in the West Bank which warrant urgent investigation,” said Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International.
“Israeli forces must immediately cease their use of intentional lethal force against people who are not posing an imminent threat to life.”
A witness told Amnesty that Abdullah had gone to the bathroom and had just come out when Israeli forces shot him. The undercover agents then threatened another patient at gunpoint and handcuffed another relative to a bed before leaving with Azzam Shalaldah in a wheelchair.
The Israeli agents were disguised as Palestinian civilians, wearing keffiyehs and fake beards, with one dressed as a pregnant woman.
A Palestinian doctor shows a bullet hole at al-Ahli hospital in the West Bank town of Hebron after a man was shot dead during a raid by Israeli undercover agents on November 12, 2015. Photo by Hazem Bader/ AFP
Israel has claimed that Abdullah attacked Israeli forces, but witnesses say he was unarmed and some metres away from the soldiers. There was no attempt to arrest him or to use non-lethal alternatives before he was shot dead, Amnesty said.
“The killing of Abdullah Shalaldah is the latest in a pattern of killings by Israeli forces which Amnesty International considers to have been unlawful,” Amnesty reported.
“The Israeli military’s own regulations allow soldiers in the occupied West Bank to open fire only when their lives are in imminent danger. It appears that this was not the case in the shooting of Abdullah Shalaldah, as he was unarmed.”
Despite the increasing number of attacks by Palestinians on Israeli soldiers, police, and civilians there is never an excuse for using lethal force where it is not warranted, the group added.
Palestinian doctors and staff of al-Ahli hospital protest after Israeli undercover agents raided the medical centre overnight on November 12, 2015 in the West Bank town of Hebron. Photo by Hazem Bader/ AFP
Palestinian dead in undercover Israeli hospital raid
By AFP /Mail Online
November 12, 2015
Undercover Israeli agents killed a Palestinian in a West Bank hospital while arresting his cousin wanted for a knife attack, in what Amnesty condemned Thursday as an apparent “extrajudicial killing”.
The Palestinian health ministry said 21 agents participated in the overnight raid to capture Azzam Shalaldeh, a patient at Al-Ahli hospital in Hebron.
Israeli security forces said they shot a man who tried to attack them, but a relative who said he was there accused the agents of having gunned him down in cold blood.
Palestinian officials and the family identified the victim as Shalaldeh’s cousin, 27-year-old Abdallah Azzam Shalaldeh.
Shalaldeh himself, aged around 20, was arrested.
According to the hospital director, Dr Jihad Shawar, the agents were disguised as Palestinian civilians transporting someone a woman about to give birth.
Surveillance video purportedly from the hospital posted online appeared to back his account.
Men in plainclothes, some in Palestinian keffiyeh scarves and others apparently wearing fake beards, enter with someone in a wheelchair.
Eight minutes later, footage showed the agents with guns drawn leaving with someone else in the wheelchair, presumably the suspect.
“They banned the medical team from moving and they took control of the surgery department, went to Shalaldeh’s room and banned anyone from entering,” Shawar said.
“When they left, the man was found bleeding and (staff) tried to save his life, but he died.”
Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency confirmed the raid, saying the man shot had “attacked” officers in an attempt to prevent them from arresting his cousin.
It said the suspect was behind an October 25 stabbing that seriously wounded an Israeli near the Mezad settlement outside Hebron.
The attacker, who Shin Bet was “from a family of militants” of Islamist movement Hamas, was said to have been shot during the attack but escaped.
Amnesty condemned the killing.
“The fact that Abdullah Shalaldah was shot in the head and upper body suggests this was an extrajudicial execution,” the organisation’s Middle East director Philip Luther said.
Bilal Shalaldeh, Shalaldeh’s brother who said he was in the room at the time of the raid, disputed the Israeli account.
“They arrested my brother and tied me up,” he told AFP.
“My cousin was in the bathroom and when he opened the bathroom door, and without any warning or any words, they shot at him five times.”
Cristina Carreno, medical coordinator with Medicins Sans Frontiers, told AFP the raid may have breached the Geneva Conventions.
The organisation provided Shalaldeh with psychosocial care after his arrival in hospital nearly three weeks ago, she confirmed.
Israel must “comply with international humanitarian law and respect the special status granted to medical facilities and the wounded,” she said.
Violence since the start of October, including a wave of knife, gun and car-ramming attacks, has killed 78 people on the Palestinian side — including one Israeli Arab — and 10 Israelis.
Many of the Palestinians killed were alleged attackers.
– ‘Sleeping lion’ –
Israel regularly carries out undercover raids, with agents known as “mustarabiin” — a reference to their disguising themselves as Arabs.
In October, AFP journalists recorded one such operation at a checkpoint outside Ramallah, in which agents who had been throwing stones with a group of Palestinians suddenly drew their guns and opened fire as stones flew at them.
Hebron, the West Bank’s largest city, has long been a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, once dubbed a “sleeping lion” by late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat.
The city is home to some 500 Israeli settlers, squeezed among 200,000 Palestinians.
The city also hosts a holy site sacred to both religions — known to Jews as the Tomb of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque
The latest violence was initially focused on Jerusalem and other parts of the West Bank, but the epicentre has since shifted to Hebron.
There is now only one route out of Hebron, and soldiers search each car and check the identities of those inside as traffic backs up.
Much of the Old City has become a ghost town, with only residents allowed in.