The Israeli army has denied reports that its soldiers beat to death an injured Palestinian alleged to have been planting a bomb.
Army spokesman was quoted in reports as saying that Mahdi Abdel Fattah Mizyed, 25, was killed by a bullet in the head from Israeli troops while allegedly laying a bomb in east Tulkarem in the West Bank.
However, Palestinian sources and witnesses said that he was beaten to death on Sunday night after being shot.
The director of Tulkarem Hospital, Ahmad Abu Bakar, who examined the body, dismissed the Israeli claim.
He told the Palestinian news agency, WAFA, that Mizyed died because his skull was fractured, not from the gunshot wounds found on his body.
Tulkarem governor, Ezzedine Al Sharif, condemned the “barbaric Israeli attack,” saying that “it is a clear evidence of the brutality of the occupation.”
A Reuters news agency report quoted eye-witnesses on Monday as saying that they saw four soldiers chasing Mizyed.
They said the soldiers caught Mizyed and beat and kicked him, and used their rifle butts to hit his head until he stopped moving.
The spokesman alleged that Israeli army sappers “confirmed that Mizyed was planting a bomb in the area.”
Since the September 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation, AFP estimates that Palestinians have killed 128 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to AFP, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 540 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to an Amnesty International report issued early this year, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children. In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” - Albawab.com
