Israeli soldiers used an 80-year-old Gazan as a human shield. Then they killed him
Illustrative photo of Israeli soldiers operating in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, 28 November 2024
Illy Pe’ery reports in +972 on 16 February 2025:
A senior officer in the Israeli army’s Nahal Brigade tied an explosive cord around the neck of an 80-year-old Palestinian man and forced him to serve as a human shield, ordering him to scout out abandoned houses under threat of having his head blown off. After he had served this purpose, the soldiers ordered the man to flee with his wife, but upon being spotted by another battalion they were both shot dead on the spot.
Soldiers present at the scene told the Israeli investigative outlet The Hottest Place in Hell that this incident took place in May in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. While conducting a sweep of houses in the area, soldiers came across the elderly couple in their home, who told Arabic-speaking soldiers that they were unable to flee to southern Gaza due to their mobility difficulties; their children had already left, and the man needed a cane to walk.
“At that stage, the commander decided to use them as ‘mosquitoes,” one soldier explained, referring to a recently exposed procedure by which the army forces Palestinian civilians in combat zones to serve as human shields to protect soldiers from being shot or blown up.
Several soldiers detained the woman at her house, while the man, using his cane, was made to walk ahead of the brigade’s soldiers. “He entered each house before us so that if there were [explosives] or a militant inside, he would [take the hit] instead of us,” one soldier explained.
According to one of the soldiers, before starting the sweep, an officer took a detonation cord — an explosive fuse used to connect charges and explosives — attached it to an initiating charge, and tied it around the elderly man’s neck “so he wouldn’t run away, even though he was walking with a cane.