International Committee of the Red Cross Condemns Israel's Inhumane Measures Against the Palestinian People
8 November 2001
Palestine Media Center - PMC
http://www.palestine-pmc.com
Yesterday 7 November, President Arafat met with the General Director of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mr. Paul Grossrieder. The President discussed the details of the persistent Israeli violations of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since the outbreak of Israeli hostilities fourteen months ago.Mr. Grossrieder stated that the Israeli execution of the three Palestinians in Nablus on 6 November was "a barbaric act". "Not only is it highly unacceptable, it is one of the worst human rights violations that one could possibly imagine. I do hope this would be the last of such an act", the General Director stressed. "The Israeli occupation forces should have allowed the Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulances and medical crews to treat the injured," he added.
Mr. Grossrieder also stressed that the International Committee of the Red Cross is going to forward an official complaint to the Israeli government for carrying out acts that contravene human rights standards.
Finally, the General Director confirmed to the President that the ICRC is going to increase the number of its employees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip "for better observation and more comprehensive reports". He also stated that the ICRC will do all it can to provide aid and improve the living conditions of Palestinians detained by the Israeli occupation authorities.
On 6 November, at approximately 1 pm, PRCS ambulances arrived at Tel south of Nablus City to rescue three injured Palestinians. However, Israeli occupation soldiers prevented the medical team from reaching the three reportedly injured Palestinians. After the medics were unsuccessful in saving an Israeli soldier's life, as he had been severely wounded, seven Israeli occupation soldiers executed the three injured Palestinians as they bleeding less than a hundred meters away from the witnessing medical crew.
Palestinians shot by soldiers at close range, witnesses say
By Lee Hockstader, The Washington Post, 11/8/2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58804-2001Nov7.html
TELL, West Bank, Nov. 7 -- Summoned to a rocky hillside in the northern West Bank, Dalya Diab, a Palestinian medic, arrived at the scene of a dwindling exchange of gunfire between Israeli troops and Palestinian guerrillas. While she was trying to revive a mortally wounded Israeli officer, she said, another Israeli officer told her three Palestinians were involved in the battle. Two were wounded, she recalled him telling her, and one was unscathed.Moments later, as she helped carry the dying Israeli officer to a jeep, she said she heard gunfire, glanced up the hill and saw a small group of Israeli soldiers standing close together, firing their automatic weapons toward the ground. "When the shooting was finished, we went back to the Israeli officer," said Diab, 29. "Then he said the three terrorists were already dead."
What she saw, Diab alleged, was the Israelis executing their Palestinian prisoners. She said she became certain after she saw their bodies, all of which she said had severe and apparently close-range bullet wounds to the head. Her account of the wounds was confirmed by two other medics and two ambulance drivers who recovered the bodies at the scene, and by the chief pathologist in Nablus, who examined the corpses...
...Journalists who asked Diab and an ambulance driver to lead them to the scene today found skull fragments, brain matter and patches of blood on the ground. That was the spot where the Palestinian medics and the pathologist said the three Palestinians had been shot through the head, and, judging from lacerations and burn marks around the wounds, at point-blank range...