KUFR AQAB: The Palestinian health ministry said on Friday that Israeli forces fatally shot two teenagers overnight in the town of Kufr Aqab in the occupied West Bank.
“The young man Amr Khaled Ahmed al Marbou (18) and the boy Sami Ibrahim Sami Mashayekh (16) were martyred by occupation forces gunfire in the town of Kufr Aqab near Ramallah”, the ministry said in a statement.
The army and the Israeli police, which has authority in the area, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported transporting two people from Kufr Aqab to a hospital during the night, one with a “very serious live bullet injury” and the second with a “live bullet injury to the chest”.
Oday al Shurfa, a friend of Marbou who said he witnessed the incident, said the pair were out on the street during clashes between Israeli forces and local Palestinians and were shot by the Israeli forces.
Shurfa said Marbou was hit “in the chest, in the heart. He collapsed and was martyred on the spot”, he said, insisting that he had not been throwing stones or taking part in the clashes.
Kufr Aqab is technically part of east Jerusalem, which is annexed by Israel, but is separated from it by the barrier built by Israel.
The town, however, does not receive proper services from the Jerusalem municipality due to the barrier, nor does it receive them from the adjacent Palestinian towns of Ramallah and Al Bireh.
Violence in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has soared since the Hamas attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war in October 2023. — AFP
