Hundreds of Palestinians mourned yesterday evening, Monday, in the town of Yamoun, northwest of Jenin, the body of a Palestinian child, who the Ministry of Health said had died of being shot by the Israeli occupation, during his storming of the city of Jenin a few days ago.
The Ministry of Health said in a statement, "The death of the child, Mahmoud Muhammad Khalil Samoudi, 12 years old, succumbed to severe wounds, which he sustained a few days ago, with live bullets fired by the occupation in the abdomen, in Jenin."
The participants in the funeral raised the Palestinian flag and chanted slogans calling for revenge for the child's death, while gunmen opened fire in the air.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates condemned what it described as the "crime of execution" of the child Smoudi, and said in a statement, "This new crime committed by the occupation forces against the child Smoudi is an integral part of the daily series of killings against our people with the cover and approval of the Israeli political level."
The ministry called on "the Secretary-General of the United Nations to quickly activate the international protection system for our people," and called in the same statement, "the International Criminal Court to immediately start its investigations into the crimes of the occupation and its settlers."
With his martyrdom, the child Samoudi holds the number 41 among the Palestinian martyrs, whose number has reached 170 martyrs since the beginning of this year, including 51 in the Gaza Strip and 4 in the occupied Palestinian interior in 1948.
The martyr Smoudi holds the number 41 among the Palestinian children martyrs since the beginning of this year (Reuters)
Siege of the Palestinians
The news of Samoudi's death came in light of clashes between Palestinian youths and the Israeli occupation forces on Monday in Shuafat camp, northeast of occupied Jerusalem. Eyewitnesses said that the occupation forces stormed the camp's "Dahit al-Salam", and raided the homes of citizens and a mosque.
The Israeli army used tear gas, rubber-coated metal bullets, and stun grenades to disperse the Palestinian youth;
As a result, a number of them suffocated.
Yesterday, for the second day in a row, the Israeli occupation forces besieged tens of thousands of Palestinians in a number of towns in East Jerusalem, with the closure of the checkpoint at the entrance to Shuafat camp.
The occupation police said that they are continuing to search for a Palestinian suspected of shooting at Israeli soldiers at a military checkpoint at the entrance to the camp.
The operation resulted in the killing of a female soldier in the Israeli Military Police and the injury of two Israeli security personnel.
4 Palestinians, including a child, were killed by the Israeli army on Friday and Saturday, during clashes and raids in the West Bank.
More than 100 Palestinians from the West Bank have died this year, most of them since late March when Israel launched a military operation following a series of bloody attacks by Palestinians in the streets of its cities, killing 19 people, and before the Israeli elections taking place in the first From November.
The Israeli military said the near-daily raids were part of an "anti-terror operation" aimed at preventing Palestinian attacks.
In response to a request for comment, the Israeli military rejected its accusation of deliberately targeting children, and said that its forces use live ammunition "only after exhausting all other options and in accordance with operational procedures consistent with international law."
storming Al Aqsa
Monday's events were not without new incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque, as 216 Israeli settlers stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque under police guard.
The Department of Islamic Endowments in Jerusalem said, in a brief statement, that "216 settlers stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque in groups in the morning" on Monday.
The incursions take place through the Mughrabi Gate in the western wall of the mosque.
Israeli right-wing groups called for an intensification of incursions into the mosque on the occasion of what the Jews call the "Throne Day", which began on Monday and lasts for a week.
Israeli occupation soldiers stormed Dahiyat al-Salam in Shuafat camp and raided the homes of citizens and a mosque (Reuters)
Burning copies of the Holy Quran
Meanwhile, settlers burned and shredded copies of the Holy Qur'an and threw them into a garbage container in the city of Hebron, in the south of the occupied West Bank.
The director of the Awqaf Department in Hebron, Nidal Al-Jabari, told Anadolu Agency that "Israeli settlers threw copies of the Holy Qur'an in the trash and burned one of them" near the Qaytun Mosque in the Old City.
And he added, "In the closed area (by Israel), our employees found, on Sunday, a torn and burned copy of the Holy Qur'an dumped next to a garbage container near the Qaytun Mosque, along with a number of other copies of the Qur'an lying in the container."
According to al-Jabari, "the burning and tearing of the Qur'anic copies was most likely during the celebration of Jewish holidays in the past days, and it may have been part of their celebrations."
In turn, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) demanded a response to the burning of copies of the Qur'an by settlers in Hebron, and considered it a "provocation of the feelings of Muslims."
The movement's spokesman, Abdel Latif Al-Qanou, said that "settler burning copies of the Qur'an is a heinous crime and an unprecedented escalation, which must be answered."
The Old City of Hebron is under full Israeli control, and is home to about 400 settlers spread in several settlement outposts, guarded by about 1,500 Israeli soldiers.