15-year-old Mahmoud Raafat Badran was laid to rest in his village of Beit Ur al-Tahta near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, June 23. Badran was shot dead by occupation forces around midnight on Wednesday, after spending the evening at a swimming pool in the village of Beit Sira west of Ramallah. He and four other Palestinian youths had been celebrating the recent arrival from Qatar of friends who were to spend the summer in their hometown of Beit Ur al-Tahta. According to local sources, Israeli soldiers began showering the car with live fire, killing Badran and seriously injuring four of the six other passengers in the car, including the driver who lost control and crashed into a wall. According to Hadash MK Ayman Odeh (Joint List) who participated in Mahmoud’s funeral on Thursday: “This was murder.”

The bereaved father of Mahmoud Raafat Badran and MK Ayman Odeh at the youth’s funeral, June 23 (Photo: Al Ittihad)

One of the wounded, Dawood Issam Abu Hassan, 16, told the Ma’an Palestinian news agency that the youths traveling in the car were suddenly “surprised by a man wearing black plain clothes who stepped out of a white Toyota and started to fire at them.” Dawood said that he and another teenager in the car managed to escape from the vehicle after it was first hit, and fled and hid under a nearby bridge to avoid more live fire. Meanwhile, Mahmoud was fatally struck by gunfire and at least two other youths remaining in the car, were also seriously wounded: Majdi Badran, 16, who was visiting from Qatar, was shot in the chest and his Khaled Badran, Majdi’s brother, who reported to be in serious condition.

The parents of the boys who had recently arrived from Qatar told Ma’an they were traveling in a car just behind the one their sons were in, and witnessed the incident unfold before their eyes, calling the attack an “Israeli crime.” Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulances said Israeli soldiers prevented paramedics from reaching the wounded Palestinians for over an hour and a half. The Israeli army admitted to having “mistakenly” opened fire on innocent bystanders after Palestinian youth were reported to have been throwing stones at Israeli settler vehicles in the area. Israeli media initially reported that Mahmoud and his friends traveling in the car were “terrorists.”

Mahmoud is one of more than 220 Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since a wave of political unrest swept the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel in October. While a number of Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces, the majority have been shot dead after alleged attacks and attempted attacks against Israelis, with nearly 30 Israelis killed during the same period.

Related:

http://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20160622_killing_of_mahmoud_badran