GENEVA: The United Nations said on Friday the killing of two Palestinian men in the occupied West Bank by Israeli security forces as they appeared to be surrendering, unarmed, looked like a “summary execution.”
“We’re appalled by the brazen killing by Israeli border police yesterday of two Palestinian men in Jenin in the occupied West Bank in yet another apparent summary execution,” UN human rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence told a briefing in Geneva.
The two men killed on Thursday appeared to be unarmed and surrendering during a raid in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestine TV news footage showed.
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The Israeli military and police issued a joint statement announcing that they had opened an investigation after forces opened fire toward suspects who had exited a building.
The two men who were shot were wanted individuals who were affiliated with a “terror network in the area of Jenin,” the statement said. It did not specify what the two men were accused of nor disclose any evidence of their alleged link with a terrorist network. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was granted an expanded security portfolio in 2022 that included responsibility for the Border Police in the occupied West Bank, issued a statement giving his “full backing” to the military and the police unit involved in the shooting.
“The fighters acted exactly as expected of them — terrorists should die!” he wrote on X.
The UN’s Laurence said: “We heard those comments, and of course, they need to be deplored, because that is a response in any situation with such brutal use of force (that) is nothing short of abhorrent.”
