Around 9:30 p.m. in late February, a white Mazda pulled up near a game cafe in the Jenin refugee camp on the northern edge of the West Bank, where a crowd of boys and young men often gathered to socialize.

As the car stopped, a few people walked by on the narrow street. Two motorbikes weaved past in different directions. “Everything was fine at the time,” according to an eyewitness sitting nearby in the camp’s main square.

Then the car erupted in a ball of flame. Two missiles fired from an Israeli drone had hit the Mazda in quick succession, as shown in a video the Israeli Air Force posted that night.

According to the IAF, the strike killed Yasser Hanoun, described as “a wanted terrorist.”

But Hanoun was not the only fatality: 16-year old Said Raed Said Jaradat, who was near the vehicle when it was hit, sustained shrapnel wounds all over his body, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International-Palestine. He died from his injuries at 1 a.m. the next morning.

Jaradat is one of 24 children killed in Israel’s airstrikes on the West Bank since last summer, when the Israeli forces began deploying drones, planes, and helicopters to carry out attacks in the occupied territory for the first time in decades.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Oh, but I’ve been told that Gazans voted for Hamas, so they’re getting what they deserve. Awfully young voting age they have in Gaza…

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Also this is the West Bank. They’re governed by Fatah, not Hamas.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        That was my fault. I just keep hearing about more and more dead children in Gaza and then see people say that Gazans voted for Hamas so that’s what you get when you do that…

        • Count042@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          That’s Southern Lebanon.

          The political organization for the West Bank is the Palestinian Authority. It is viewed as completely subservient to the Israel government to the point of allowing the IDF to take Palestinian children hostages (Technically the IDF calls it an arrest, but there are no charges, and often times no trials. It is functionally equivalent to kidnapping.)

          Regardless, you’ve made it clear you have literally no idea what you’re talking about and you are doing so in defense of the slaughter of innocent children.

    • Snowclone@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Considering Hamas ended all voting when they came into power, it seems unlikely these children did. Also because there children.