A Palestinian boy was shot in the head during an Israeli army operation in the West Bank city ofJenin today. He died of his wounds moments later, Palestinian medical sources said.
Diya Ghawadrah (12) was hit by heavy machine-gun fire near the hospital as troops were besieging a nearby house where wanted militants were holed up.
Three other Palestinians were wounded during the operation and the three militants captured, including a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah.
According to reports, the troops surrounding the house used civilians as human shields to approach the building without being targeted by the gunmen inside.
One of them was a British woman volunteering with local humanitarian organisations.
"Myself, two Palestinian women and three girls, including a four-year-old were forced by the soldiers to sit down near the house, and they fired from behind us," Ewa (24) said, refusing to divulge her surname.
Israeli and Palestinian rights groups have documented several cases of Israeli troops using civilians, often children, as human shields during their almost daily West Bank sweeps for suspected militants.
AFP