Palestinian teen killed by Israeli forces during Ramallah protest

A Palestinian teenager was killed by Israeli forces on Friday in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health identified the teen as 18-year-old Mahmoud Nakhleh, who was shot in the abdomen with live bullets during a protest against the Israeli army in the al-Jalazun refugee camp.

According to Maan, a local Palestinian news agency, Israeli soldiers shot Nakhleh from a distance of fewer than 10 metres. 

The soldiers tried to detain Nakhleh afterwards, Maan reported, but Palestinian paramedics were able to take him after a standoff that lasted more than 30 minutes. After Nakhleh was transferred to a hospital, he was pronounced dead.

#صورة | الشهيد محمود نخلة الذي ارتقى عقب استهدافه برصاص #الاحتلال في مخيم الجلزون شمال رام الله, pic.twitter.com/4irzrHyTZZ

— فلسطين بوست (@plespost) December 14, 2018

Translation: The martyr Mahmoud Nakhleh who died after being targeted by the [Israeli] occupation’s bullets in the Jalazun refugee camp north of Ramallah.

Fadwa Safi, a resident of the Jalazun camp, told Al Jazeera that as the soldiers were dragging Nakhleh, they were beating him up. 

The 42-year-old was in her home when her sister called to say there was a boy who was injured by a bullet and was being dragged by the army.

“I stepped out of my home and then I saw them carrying him and beating him while he’s injured,” Safi said. “Four soldiers were dragging him and there were around seven additional soldiers walking with them.”

“I ran after them,” she continued. “They threw a sound grenade at me and told me to go home, but I said I’m not going – I want the boy because he still had life in him, he was still breathing and moving. They threw him on the ground.”

Safi said the ambulance was already present but that the soldiers wouldn’t let it enter the camp at first.

“One soldier pointed his rifle at me,” she said. “I told him: shoot me, I want the boy.”

“I had hoped to save him and I couldn’t,” she wept. “I was happy when I took him [because I thought] he could be rescued. I didn’t know he was dying.”

Protests ongoing 

Ramallah was under a complete lockdown by the Israeli army on Thursday, following a shooting attack by an unknown Palestinian who killed two Israeli soldiers near the illegal settlement of Ofra. 

Most of the entry checkpoints were reopened on Friday, but Israeli forces remain heavily deployed on the outskirts of Ramallah and have carried out sporadic raids into the twin city of al-Bireh, resulting in Palestinians protesting against their presence.

According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, at least 100 Palestinians have been arrested over the past 24 hours.

Four Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in separate operations overnight on Wednesday and on Thursday afternoon. 

Protests against the Israeli army continued across the occupied West Bank. In the village of al-Lubban al-Gharbiyeh near Nablus, a Palestinian youth was injured with a rubber-coated steel bullet to his eye.

Other protests took place in the Taqu’a village east of Bethlehem and in Hebron’s Old City, where dozens suffered from tear gas inhalation and sustained wounds from rubber-coated bullets.

Additional reporting by Ibrahim Husseini