Israeli troops have been accused of executing two unarmed Palestinian men they suspected of being terrorists who surrendered during a raid in the West Bank.
Horrific footage taken during a military raid in the Palestinian city of Jenin showed Israeli border cops shooting the men dead from point blank range after they emerged from a building with their hands in the air.
Both of the men, who were later named as Mahmoud Qassem Abdallah, 26, and Youssef Asasa, 37, were seen lifting up their shirts as they knelt on the floor, in an apparent show that they were unarmed.
They then lay down on the ground in front of the building, before the Israeli forces directed the men back inside the building and opened fire.
The deaths of the two men are the latest in a long-running campaign of terror in the West Bank, which has ramped up since October 2023. Israel says it is cracking down on militants, but Palestinians and rights groups accuse Israel of using excessive force and say dozens of unarmed civilians have been killed.
The IDF said the Jenin incident was under review, but claimed that the two men were terrorists who had earlier led attacks on Israeli troops.
The IDF and local police claimed the men, who were ‘wanted individuals who had carried out terror activities, including hurling explosives and firing at security forces’, had been holed up in a multi-hour ‘surrender procedure’.
A spokesperson said: ‘The forces entered the area, enclosed the structure in which the suspects were located and initiated a surrender procedure that lasted several hours.
‘Following the use of engineering tools on the structure, the two suspects exited.
‘Following their exit, fire was directed toward the suspects. The incident is under review by the commanders on the ground and will be transferred to the relevant professional bodies.’
Both Mahmoud’s and Youssef’s bodies were taken by Israeli troops following the incident that the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank’s governing body, described as a ‘deliberate war crime’.
A Palestinian Authority spokesman said: ‘Israeli occupation forces executed two young Palestinians in Jenin in cold blood, even after they had turned themselves in.
‘An outright extrajudicial killing in blatant violation of international humanitarian law.’
But Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s hard-right security minister, said the Israeli troops had his support.
He said: ‘Lending full backing to the border police and IDF troops who shot at wanted terrorists who were coming out of a building in Jenin.
‘The troops acted precisely as is expected of them – terrorists have to die’.
The shooting is part of a larger operation in a northeastern region of the West Bank. Israel’s military has detained more than 100 people since Tuesday in the town of Tubas, according to Abdullah al-Zaghari, spokesman for the advocacy group Palestinian Prisoners’ Club.
The military has said the operation was a response to ‘attempts to establish terrorist strongholds and construction of terror infrastructures in the area’.
On November 19, Palestinian attackers stabbed an Israeli to death and wounded three more at a West Bank intersection before being shot down by troops.
Israel’s military has scaled up military operations in the West Bank since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, which triggered the war in Gaza.
The latest operation comes amid a rising tide of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank. Israeli leaders have played down the settler attacks as the work of a small minority.
But Palestinians say the attacks are frequent, often in close proximity to Israeli troops, and the settlers are rarely punished.
