Israeli soldiers threw, pushed and kicked three Palestinians off the roof of a building on Thursday during a military raid in the occupied West Bank town of Qabatiya, according to multiple verified videos of the gruesome incident.
It was not clear from the videos, which were verified by The New York Times, if the Palestinians were alive or dead at the time. The three appeared to be lifeless and at least one of them blindfolded.
One video shows a soldier shooting at one of the Palestinians, who is laying on the ground, and a small burst as the bullet hits the body.
In response to questions about the video, the Israeli military, said it was reviewing the matter.
“This is a serious incident that does not coincide with I.D.F. values and the expectations from I.D.F. soldiers,” the military said, using the abbreviation of its formal name, Israel Defense Forces.
The White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Friday described the video as “deeply disturbing.”
“If it’s proven to be authentic, it clearly would depict abhorrent and egregious behavior by professional soldiers,” he said.
According to Wafa, seven Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military during a 10-hour raid into Qabatiya, south of the city of Jenin, on Thursday. Among them, Wafa said, were the three people — believed to be men — captured in the video.
Wafa reported that, after being thrown from the building, the bodies were were mutilated on the ground by the claw of an Israeli excavator before being taken away by the military, according to Wafa.
The Israeli military said in a social media posting that it had killed “four armed terrorists during an exchange of fire” in the course of the 10-hour raid. The military did not indicate whether those included the three people thrown from the roof.
The Times could not independently verify the information from Wafa or the Israeli military.
The military did not respond to questions from The Times about the condition of the three people on the roof or whether it had taken action against soldiers in the video.
The Qabatiya municipality condemned the killings as a “massacre” and decried the lack of response from the international community.
Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom, asserted that the three had still been alive. “Israeli occupation soldiers throw injured men from a rooftop in Qabatiya outside Jenin in the occupied West Bank earlier today,” he wrote on social media on Thursday. “This is Israel’s ‘self defense.’”
Since late August, Israel has conducted its most wide-scale and destructive military raids into Palestinian cities in the West Bank in two decades, including dozens of airstrikes.
The Israeli military has characterized the raids as “counterterrorism” operations, aimed at armed fighters who it says have increased their attacks against Israel. It says it has found weapons stores and killed militants.
Palestinians and human rights groups have described them as indiscriminate raids that kill civilians, destroy massive amounts of infrastructure and trap residents in their homes for days.
More than 60 people, including civilians, have been killed in the raids since Aug. 28, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Among those killed have been at least seven children, according to the United Nations.
Bill Van Esveld, acting Israel and Palestine director for Human Rights Watch, said that the case of the three men thrown from the roof was serious, whether they were alive or dead. “If confirmed, as a matter of international human rights law, killing people by deliberately throwing them off a building would be an extrajudicial execution,” he said, adding, “And throwing dead bodies off would be considered cruel and inhuman treatment.” He said that Human Rights Watch had not yet verified the videos themselves.
In the longest verified video, three soldiers are seen throwing and pushing the men over the edge of the roof one by one.
The soldiers grab the legs of the first man and toss him over the edge, but his left foot appears to catch on the roof’s ledge and for a second he hangs upside down. One soldier bends down and free the man’s foot and his body falls to the ground below.
All three soldiers then grab the second man, with one soldier grabbing his feet and another his arms and they throw him over the edge.
The third man they kick, drag and push over the edge.
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