AL-QUDS (Dispatches) –
Palestinian officials and human rights groups have condemned the martyrdom of a Palestinian man by Zionist troops in occupied East Al-Quds.
The occupying regime’s troops have released surveillance video from the site of the shooting near Al-Quds’ Old City on Saturday.
In the footage, the Palestinian, identified as 25-year-old Mohammad Salima, appears to be approached and vexed by a Zionist man and then by Zionist troops before being shot and falling to the ground.
Other footage shot by bystanders appeared to show Zionist police officers continuing to shoot Salima from point-blank range while he was lying on the ground and not appearing to pose a threat.
The United Nation’s Human Rights Office (OHCHR) said it was “shocked by the apparent extra-judicial execution”.
“While on the ground and injured, Israeli forces shot Mr. Slima twice, apparently killing him,” it said in a statement.
“Extra-judicial killings such as this are the consequence of the regular resort to lethal force by well-armed and well-protected Israeli security personnel against Palestinians, and the almost total lack of accountability for killings and injuries of Palestinians by Israeli forces. Will there be accountability in this case? The UN Human Rights Office is monitoring the case further.”
The Zionist regime’s ministry of judiciary affairs said two police officers were brought in for questioning over the killing, according to media. The ministry’s police investigations unit said the police officers were questioned shortly after the incident and released without conditions.
Zionist prime minister Naftali Bennett said he “fully backs” the officers, saying in a statement they “operated as expected of Israeli officers”.
The office of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas said the shooting “was a continuity of Israel’s ongoing aggression on the Palestinian people that should not be tolerated”.
PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh condemned it as a “crime of execution” and called for it to be added to the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) investigation file into the occupying regime’s war crimes.
Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, wrote in a tweet: “Contrary to the sanitized terminology Israeli authorities and media use, the assailant wasn’t “neutralized”. He was summarily executed.”
The incident has drawn comparisons with a 2016 killing in which Zionist trooper Elor Azaria was caught on camera shooting a wounded 21-year-old Palestinian, Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, as he lay on the ground after he allegedly carried out a stabbing attack against a Zionist trooper in Al-Khalil in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian and international rights groups have long condemned what they see as a policy of shoot to kill and excessive use of force.
Ramallah-based rights group Al-Haq has said that such killings must be understood in the “broader context of Israel’s widespread and systematic resort to lethal and other excessive force and a shoot-to-kill policy targeting Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line”.