Gaza: The morning after burying 19-year-old Abdul Fattah Abdul Nabi, his family gathered in a tent set up to receive mourners, watching and rewatching a video of the moment they say Israeli soldiers shot him in the back of the head.
The video appears to show Abdul Fattah, dressed in black, running away from the border fence carrying a tyre. Just before reaching the crowd, he crumples under gunfire.
“He had no gun, no Molotov, a tyre. Does that harm the Israelis, a tyre?” asked his brother Mohamed Abdul Nabi, 22. “He wasn’t going toward the Israeli side. He was running away.”
The teenager was one of at least 15 people killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip on Friday, during what Palestinian factions billed as a peaceful “March of Return” to mark Land Day, the anniversary of the expropriation of Arab-owned land by the Israeli government in 1976. But it ended as the bloodiest day in the 225-square-kilometre territory since the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the Israeli military for guarding the country’s borders. “Israel will act firmly and decisively to protect its sovereignty and the security of its citizens,” he said on Saturday.
Read the article in The Age (from The Washington Post).
[Editor: Check out this IDF Twitter post where it is apparent that ‘Mr. Innocent’ has been identified as Abed Elrahman Abed, an active operative of the Hamas terrorist organisation’s military wing.]