Tag: Aida Camp

23 January 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Bethlehem, Occupied Palestine

On Friday January 18th at approximately 3.20 pm, fifteen year old Saleh Elamareen was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier in Aida refugee camp, Bethlehem. Today Wednesday 23 January he was pronounced dead.

Salah Elamareen was outside the Lajee Refugee Centre when he was shot through the left forehead. The Centre lies some distance from the wall itself. At the time of the shooting eyewitnesses have said that protests were not happening, and that the people of Aida were simply watching the soldiers from afar. This is supported by video documentation of the incident, which shows a group of youth carrying Elamareen after he was shot.

Two of the doctors who treated Elamareen did not rule out previous rumours that he was shot with a dumdum bullet, due to the fragmentation of the bullet within his head. Another doctor has claimed it was definitely a dumdum bullet in his opinion.

Dumdum bullets expand after impact and are designed to cause maximum damage and pain. Due to the brutality of these bullets they are illegal under international law. Article 8 at the Review Conference of the Rome Statute in Kampala made the use of expanding bullets in non-international armed conflict a war crime. The Hague Convention also prohibits there use in international warfare. If the doctors are correct and a dumdum bullet was in-fact used, this would be another serious violation of international laws and standards by Israel.

The head of the department under which he was treated at the government hospital said he was hit with the bullet in the left frontal section of the head, around the eye, causing large intracranial hemorrhaging. A number of doctors who looked at the patient concluded that the bullet exploded in the brain. The CT scan shows the shrapnel inside his skull. The entry wound shows significant impact to the skull, and there is no exit wound.

Note: There are several occurrences of English transcription of the victim’s name: Saleh Elamareen (used here), Saleh al Amareen, Saleh Amareen and Saleh Amarin.

by Kristin Ess

Just over an hour ago Israeli soldiers opened fire on a small group of children in Bethlehem’s Aida Refugee Camp.
The Israeli occupying army entered the camp, as they do most days and nights, in jeeps,with their tanks rumbling on the side roads.

The Israeli soldiers were throwing tear gas into the camp, choking its Palestinian residents who could not escape from their homes because the Israeli military had imposed curfew on them. To leave ones home means arrest or death.
A group of Palestinian children protested the Israeli invasion by throwing stones at the heavily armoured jeeps and tanks. Israeli soldiers shot the kids.

One is dead. His name was Tariq Abu Jadu. Ambulances could not reach the camp. Two other kids are still in critical condition in the hospital. One is 15, the other is just 12 years old. A few people in the camp snuck out with the three to take them to the hospital. They live in a refugee camp in a Palestinian city which suffers from Israeli invasion after invasion.

The Israeli military government imposes curfew on them which deems attending school or living a free life impossible. This is now the 55th year of Israeli imposed horror on the Palestinian people.

Grown Palestinians must ask the permission of the occupying military government to leave ones own town. The Israeli government would not issue travel permits to the Palestinian delegation to attend the conference on the “peace process” in Britain.