Israeli officer: The young men killed by a drone in Khan Yunis were not armed

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A senior Israeli officer said on Sunday that the four young men who were targeted by an Israeli drone in Khan Yunis were unarmed and did not endanger Israeli forces in the area in which they were walking, according to Haaretz newspaper.

This comes after Al Jazeera broadcast scenes obtained from an Israeli drone showing the targeting of Palestinian civilians in the Al-Sikka area in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, at the beginning of last February.

The Israeli officer described the incident as very dangerous, and did not rule out that the young men were searching for food. The officer also acknowledged that the army had established execution zones in Gaza, and anyone who crossed them would be shot.

However, a group of reserve army commanders and Israeli commanders who spoke to Haaretz disputed the claim that all of them were armed. It is very likely that Palestinians who had never carried a weapon in their lives were included in this classification after their death, at least by the Israeli army.

“It is surprising to hear reports after each operation about how many militants were killed,” says an Israeli reserve officer who served in Gaza. “You don’t need to be a genius to realize that you don’t have hundreds or dozens of armed men running through the area” on the streets of Gaza, he said. Khan Yunis and Jabalia, fighting the Israeli army.”

So what do the battles in Gaza really look like? According to a reserve officer, there were “usually two or three armed men hiding inside the building, and those who discover them are fighters with special equipment or drones.”

One of this officer's roles was to inform the higher levels of the number of militants who had been killed in the area where he and his men were fighting. He explains: “This was not a formal interrogation, where they want you to show all the bodies... They ask you how many there are? And we give them a number based on what we see.” We understand it on the ground, and we move forward."

Haaretz newspaper collected testimonies from officers and soldiers who fought in Gaza, and quoted them as saying that the army classified about 9,000 Palestinians whom it says it killed as “terrorists, but in reality the majority of them were civilians, and they did not pose any threat.”

The exclusive scenes broadcast by Al Jazeera show an Israeli march targeting 4 young Palestinian civilians in the city, after the Israeli march pursued the young men and targeted them with several missiles. Two of them were martyred with the first missile, then the third was martyred, and then the fourth was martyred with two other missiles.

Scenes of an Israeli drone killing civilians in Gaza, broadcast by Al Jazeera, anger American lawmakers #Gaza_War pic.twitter.com/OXjg6FTPl7

- Al Jazeera Palestine (@AJA_Palestine) March 26, 2024

Earlier, the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation said that the scenes broadcast by Al Jazeera targeting 4 young men in Khan Yunis were revealed after examination to be from an armed cell, without providing any evidence that the young men were armed or linked to military activity.

These soldiers added that the fault of (these victims) was crossing an imaginary line drawn by the army, which if crossed gives the forces permission to shoot at them.

One of the soldiers told the newspaper: “For our commanders, if we identified a person in our area of ​​operations who was not part of our forces, we were told to shoot to kill... We were explicitly told that even if a suspect entered a building with people in it, we must shoot to kill.” The building and killed him, even if other people were injured.”

The US State Department said that Israel bears responsibility for investigating violations of the laws of war, commenting on the Israeli army’s targeting and killing of 4 Palestinian civilians after tracking them with a drone.

A US State Department spokesman told Anadolu Agency that they "have not yet confirmed the authenticity of the scenes," but he expressed his great concern about them, and confirmed that he had requested more information from Israeli officials about them.

American channels, including MSNBC, also covered the scenes of the killing of those young men, and asked US Senator Chris Van Hollen to comment on their content, to which he responded that they were horrific, and stressed the need to investigate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s management of the war, and to conduct an independent review regarding it. And even subject him to investigation.

Burial by bulldozer

In addition to that incident, the American CNN network quoted a statement by the Israeli army in which it admitted to killing two Palestinians and burying their bodies with a bulldozer, after Al Jazeera published a video clip showing the details of the killing.

The Israeli army claimed, in its statement, that the two Palestinians were killed after they approached what it called the area of ​​operations in central Gaza in a manner it described as suspicious, and “they did not respond to warning shots.”

This comes as the occupation army continues its war on Gaza since the seventh of last October, leaving tens of thousands of martyrs, wounded and missing, amid a humanitarian situation described as catastrophic and a worsening famine looming over the besieged Strip.

Source: Al Jazeera + agencies + Israeli press