From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Palestinian says Israeli soldiers used him as human shield during West Bank raid
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A Palestinian shop owner said Israeli troops used him as a human shield to protect themselves during a raid on the town of Dura in the West Bank yesterday.
Cellphone footage showed Baha Abu Ras being marched up a street by a soldier who guided him from behind with one hand and kept a rifle resting on his shoulder with the other. Two Israeli soldiers advanced carefully behind them, their rifles raised.
Abu Ras said he had been taken from his cellphone shop in Dura, near the city of Hebron, after Israeli soldiers searched the premises during a raid in which Palestinian officials said two Palestinians were shot dead.
The raid was carried out to arrest suspects tied to a terror rampage in Ra’anana in which two Palestinian relatives from the Dura area stabbed and ran over Israelis in the central town, killing one and injuring 18 people.
Baha Abu Ras, a mobile shop owner in the occupied West Bank, says that an Israeli soldier used him as a human shield during a military raid on Monday. According to Reuters, Abu Ras said that the soldiers asked him if he sold drones and searched his shop before taking him outside. pic.twitter.com/GiX7AeQ7UC
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 16, 2024
“He (the first soldier) told me that he will use me as a human shield, that young people shouldn’t hurl stones,” Abu Ras tells Reuters. “‘You will walk in front of me.’ That’s what happened and he took me toward the center of the town.”
Asked about the incident, the Israeli military had no immediate comment. It said in an earlier statement that troops in Dura had used live fire to disperse about 100 people who had thrown stones and fire bombs at them.
The use of human shields is widely condemned under international law. Israel accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields in Gaza.
The Times of Israel Community.