HEBRON: Israeli troops in Hebron shot dead an elderly Palestinian civilian on Friday in a case of mistaken identity as they searched for a Hamas prisoner released a day earlier.
The Israeli army expressed regret over the killing, with a spokesman admitting the 67-year-old man was an innocent civilian who lived in the same house as the wanted Hamas operative.
Palestinian witnesses and security officials said the shooting took place inside an apartment building in central Hebron as troops were searching for one of the five prisoners released from the city’s jail on Thursday.
The dead man was identified as Omar Kawasme, with family members saying he was an uncle of Wael Al-Bitar, one the Hamas prisoners being sought by Israel.
Speaking to AFP, the dead man’s son Rajaeh Kawasme said the soldiers had entered the house while his mother was praying and his father was asleep. They had locked her in another room, then opened fire on his father in his bed.
"They murdered him in cold blood with 13 bullets in the head without even checking his identity," he told AFP. "After they killed him, they asked for his identity card.
"They thought that Bitar lived in this apartment so they shot my father without confirming his identity."
An AFP correspondent at the scene said the shooting took place in a bedroom on the building’s first floor, with the bed drenched in blood.
Bitar’s home is on the ground floor.
The Israeli army admitted Kawasme had been killed by mistake by troops who were trying to find Bitar, a member of Hamas’s armed wing whom they said was wanted for his involvement in a number of suicide bombings.
"During this morning’s arrest operation, a Palestinian man who was present in one of the terrorist’s homes was killed. The IDF regrets the outcome of the incident," a statement said, adding an investigation had been opened.
"There is no indication that he himself was a terrorist," a spokesman explained, saying the killing of Kawasme was "definitely not intentional" as he was "not a target."
"There is no indication that he was involved in any terror activity at any stage and therefore we regret the incident," he said.
The army said it had rearrested all five Hamas prisoners overnight, including Bitar, whom they said was responsible for planning several suicide attacks, including one which killed an Israeli woman and wounded 10 other people in the southern town of Dimona in 2008.
The pre-dawn killing prompted a furious response from the Islamist Hamas movement which rules the Gaza Strip, with a spokesman blaming the Palestinian Authority of president Mahmoud Abbas.
"Hamas holds the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank responsible, along with the occupation, for this crime," Sami Abu Zuhri told a news conference.
"We call on the Palestinian Authority to immediately stop political arrests and to give the resistance a chance to protect the Palestinian people in the West Bank."
The prisoners had been arrested by the Palestinian Authority, which is controlled by the secular Fatah movement, a bitter rival of Hamas, and were being held on unspecified "security grounds" prompting them to go on hunger strike.
Abbas had on Thursday ordered their release.
Kawasme was buried in a Hebron cemetery shortly after Friday prayers with thousands attending the funeral, an AFP correspondent said.
At the same time, several thousand people rallied in Gaza City, with protestors waving green Hamas flags and shouting: "The Palestinian Authority is collaborating with the Zionists" and "No to political arrests!"
The release of the inmates came as Fatah and Hamas traded allegations of prisoner abuse. The two factions have been engaged in tit-for-tat arrests, often holding detainees without charges or trial.
Relations between the two have been tense for years and resentment boiled over after Hamas won elections in 2006. A year later, Hamas routed Fatah in bloody fighting in Gaza, effectively splitting the Palestinian territories in two and confining Abbas’s rule to the West Bank.
