Zionist Regime Detained 400 Palestinian Minors Since Jan.: Rights Group

Date: 20 November 2020 - 19:45

News ID: ۸۵۰۱۱

WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Zionist troops have arrested more than 400 Palestinians under the age of 18 since the start of the current year, as the regime continues to target young Palestinians across the occupied territories, a Palestinian human rights group says.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS), in a statement released on the occasion of World Children’s Day, which is celebrated on November 20 each year, announced that approximately 170 Palestinian children are currently languishing behind bars in the three Israeli-run detention centers of Megiddo, Ofer and Damon.
It added that Zionist troops relentlessly continue their arrest campaign against Palestinian children despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Palestinian minors held in Israeli prisons are denied access to lawyers and family visits as well.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Ministry of Information pointed to the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children by Zionist troops, stating that more than 3,000 minors have lost their lives at the hands of the occupying regime’s troops since the Second Intifada (uprising).
The ministry said in a statement on Thursday that at least 3,097 Palestinian children have been killed, while tens of thousands of others sustained injuries between the Second Intifada, which broke out on September 28, 2000 against the Zionist regime’s occupation of Palestinian territory, until the end of October 2019.
The statement added that 123 Palestinian minors have been killed and many more injured ever since U.S. President Donald Trump sparked controversy by officially recognizing al-Quds as the regime’s ‘capital’ in December 2017. More than 17,000 Palestinian children were rounded up and detained during the mentioned period as well.
The Palestinian Ministry of Information highlighted that seven children have been killed in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip since the beginning of the current year as a result of the Israeli military assaults.
More than 7,000 Palestinian children have been detained by the Zionist regime since 2015, and some have been sentenced to ten years in prison or life imprisonment, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) said in a statement.
The society highlighted that most of the child detainees are from occupied al-Quds.
The PPS then called on international human rights institutions, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in particular, to make serious efforts to protect Palestinian children, and to oblige the occupying regime to abide by a series of agreements concerning protection of child detainees.