WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Zionist troops killed 357 Palestinians in 2021 amid the silence of the international community over the occupying regime’s increasing acts of violence against civilians, a report by an NGO says.
The secretary general of the National Association of the Martyrs’ Families of Palestine, Muhammad Sbeihat, said on Saturday that the body has carried out field research and investigations in various provinces and found out that all these Palestinians were killed at the hands of the Zionist regime last year.
The report showed that some 19 percent of those killed were women, which is the highest figure in the history of the regime’s crimes and acts of violation after its occupation of Palestinian land in 1948.
The report added that 22 percent of those martyred were children, emphasizing that silence of the international community has encouraged Tel Aviv to commit such crimes against the Palestinian people.
Sbeihat also called on the international community, human rights institutions and the Palestinian Authority, particularly the Palestinian ministries of justice and foreign affairs to pursue legal prosecution of Zionist regime officials in international courts.
Rights advocates say Zionist troops have adopted a “shoot-to-kill” policy during clashes with Palestinians, even in clear cases where they could be captured.
The occupying regime has been criticized for its extensive use of lethal force and extrajudicial killing of Palestinians who do not pose an immediate threat to its forces or to settlers.
Zionist troops have on numerous occasions been caught on camera, brutally killing Palestinians, with the videos going viral online and sparking international condemnation.
Late last month, regime forces shot and injured a 16-year-old Palestinian boy during clashes in Kufr Qaddoum area in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.
Sources and witnesses said that the teenager was shot in the chest with a rubber-coated steel bullet fired by the Israeli forces during clashes in the area.
The Zionist regime occupied the West Bank in 1967 before starting to dot the Palestinian territory with illegal settlements and severely restricting the Palestinians’ freedom of movement there.
Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state with East Al-Quds as its capital.