Israeli forces, including soldiers disguised as Palestinians, arrest a Palestinian child in occupied Jerusalem on October 24, 2014.
An Israeli Army officer was accidentally shot and killed by one of his own troops during a training operation in which he was pretending to be a Palestinian at an Israeli military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday.
The 22-year-old army commander David Golovenchik was carrying out a training exercise with his soldiers but hadn’t told the soldiers to unload their weapons prior to the drill.
Golovenchik took off his gear and pretended to be a Palestinian going through a military security checkpoint, then began a simulated stabbing attack. The simulation turned fatal when one of the participating soldiers cocked his gun and shot the commander, killing him.
The Israeli military has opened an investigation into the incident, however, officials have said that “it appears that it did not happen deliberately.”
The killed commander was given a funeral on Wednesday.
The use of lethal force against Palestinians by Israeli occupying forces is a regular occurrence.
“The training simulation that left an Israeli commander dead on Tuesday tragically mirrored the pattern of killings that have left scores of Palestinians dead in recent years,” the Electronic Intifada wrote.
Amnesty International has condemned the “extrajudicial executions.”
“Most (Palestinians) killed were shot while attacking Israelis or suspected of intending an attack,” Amnesty International writes in a report. “Some, including children, were shot when they were posing no immediate threat to others’ lives and appeared to be victims of unlawful killings.”
According to the Electronic Intifada, the Tel Rumeida neighborhood where the incident occurred has been the site of multiple killings of Palestinians in the last several years alone, most of which occurred during alleged stabbing attempts at military checkpoints.
Roughly 850 Israeli settlers live in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron in occupied West Bank, along with a heavy Israeli military presence enforcing regular security checkpoints on the local Palestinian residents.
© teleSUR
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