Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian teenager early Tuesday in the West Bank, mistakenly believing he was involved in an earlier stone-throwing incident, the Israel Defense Forces said.
Mahmoud Raafat Badran, 15, was on his way home from a swimming pool when the car he was traveling in came under Israeli military fire, Abdul Kareem Qassem, the head of the Beit Ur al-Tahta village council, told CNN.
The boy lived in Beit Ur al-Tahta and had been to a pool in the neighboring village of Tira, both west of Ramallah in the West Bank.
Six other Palestinians in the car were injured, including two who remain in serious condition from gunshot wounds, Qassem said.
IDF soldiers were responding to an earlier incident near the village after stones and Molotov cocktails had been thrown close to a road that links Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and cuts through the West Bank. Three civilians were injured, the IDF said, including tourists from Britain and Belgium.
“Nearby forces acted in order to protect additional passing vehicles from immediate danger and fired towards suspects,” an IDF statement said.
The Israeli military said it had detained two suspects in the incident, adding they were not among the injured.
Saeb Erakat, PLO secretary general, condemned the fatal shooting and called on the U.N. special rapporteur to open an investigation into what he described as “extrajudicial killings of Palestinians, particularly children.”
