Jordan Times - Sept 24, 2002

NABLUS (AP) — A British volunteer working with Palestinians in the West Bank said on Monday she witnessed an Israeli soldier shoot dead a Palestinian teenager, deliberately and without provocation.
Israeli military officials claimed 13-year-old Baha Albahsh set himself alight while handling a firebomb, but a Palestinian doctor said he was killed by a gunshot in the chest.

Ewa Jasiewics, 24, of London, an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, said Albahsh tagged along with her group as usual on Sunday as the foreigners walked in the town of Nablus to observe Israeli troops' behaviour towards youngsters breaking a military curfew to get to school.

"An armoured personnel car came and stopped on the left of the street," Jasiewics said. "A soldier popped up from inside. I saw him with his rifle and he aimed at some kids on the street. There was no stone-throwing or shooting going on at the time."

Jasiewics said that in the month she has spent with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip she has often seen soldiers train their gunsights on people without further incident; this time was different.

"This soldier fired," she said. "I saw Baha lying on the ground, with blood coming out of his chest ... I saw blood oozing from his mouth. We called an ambulance and the ambulance came and took him."

"It wasn't accidental," Jasiewics said. "The soldiers decided to kill him."

There was no official army statement on the incident, but military sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, alleged that an army patrol saw a child lighting a firebomb which then set him aflame. There was no gunfire, the sources said, adding that the soldiers saw the burned boy taken away by ambulance.

A doctor at Rafidia Hospital in Nablus said Albahsh was killed by a bullet which entered his body at the shoulder and lodged in his chest.

Nablus, the West Bank's largest city, has been under almost constant curfew since June 21 when Israel slammed the territory into lockdown to prevent Palestinian freedom fighters from attacking Israeli civilians.