Palestinian Family Was Eating Dinner When the IDF Sprayed Bullets at Their House, murdering two-year-old child

The toddler’s grandfather says there had been no IDF warning before she was murdered in the West Bank operation.

Haaretz

The grandfather of the two-year-old Palestinian girl who was fatally shot on Saturday night by IDF soldiers near Jenin in the West Bank claimed troops had opened fire on the family home without justification or warning.

2 years old Laila was shot while eating dinner inside their home, her grandfather, Bassam Asous, told Haaretz. Her mother was shot in the arm, and her aunt was hit in the head by shrapnel, Asous added. Laila’s father, an engineer, was killed two years earlier in a work accident, and Laila’s mother is now crippled by grief, said Asous.

Asous said he confronted the soldiers after Laila was shot.

‘At first she was still alive and crying. I asked the soldiers – why did you kill her? She is just a little baby. How is she involved, why did you shoot at us? The soldier told me, ‘Sorry.’ We spoke English. What do you mean sorry? She was shot in the head.’

The IDF said troops had surrounded a house and fired at a building where, based on intelligence, a terrorist was believed to be holed up. Troops opened fire only after making calls on loudspeakers at the building, the army said.

The IDF said that the details of the incident are under investigation.

Asous said the IDF fired at the family extensively while they were inside their home, without contacting them in advance to leave.

‘We were having dinner; it was about 8 P.M. We were home, my daughters and I and my baby grandchild. There were soldiers outside but we didn’t hear them, we had the windows closed due to the weather,’ he said.

His home faces the street, and since Israeli forces often pass through the village, which is on the outskirts of Jenin, the family usually presumes any military action it hears is far away.

‘Suddenly they started shooting at us and we were surprised. Why would they be shooting at us? The women ran into an interior room. They kept shooting. My daughters started to scream and we got onto the ground because a window had broken and there were glass shards. My daughter held her daughter to her chest because she intended to feed her, and then she yelled – Laila has been hit! I grabbed her and went down to the street.’

An ambulance was called, but it arrived late due to military activity in the area.

‘All this time she was bleeding into the street and then she died,’ he said.

‘It was uncalled for, unjustified,’ he said. The house came under heavy gunfire, with bullets hitting the sofas, the toilet and his daughters’ room. ‘The entire house,’ he said.

‘I am a civilian. The military is obliged to protect me. If there’s a danger somewhere, the military needs to take me out and put me somewhere safe – especially true for women and children – and then it can do as it pleases and I will stay out of it,’ he said. ‘But for them to shoot at me, a civilian? Honestly, it’s strange. We are protected by international law and the laws of war. I thought I was safe.’

He and his family has no ties to the gunmen, he said.

‘If you want to get me out, call, make a phone call. I hear that a lot of people, if they want to search the house they order the family to come out and they search the house and that’s that. What happened yesterday is strange.’

Asous is a schoolteacher and Laila’s mother is a graduate student in engineering, he said.

‘My daughter is in very, very bad shape. She has lost her husband and now her daughter. She cannot stand,’ he added.

This week, the IDF launched a large-scale operation in Jenin it is calling Operation Iron Wall. The military says the goal is to preserve Israel’s ‘freedom of action’ across the West Bank, targeting terror infrastructure and ‘ticking bombs.’ According to the IDF, the operation is expected to continue in the coming days, focusing mainly on the refugee camp.

The military is trying to reach certain targets that Palestinian Authority security forces either could not or were unwilling to reach themselves, while also working to remove the increasing threat of explosive devices in the region.

Since the start of the operation, 13 Palestinians have been killed in the Jenin area, including two terrorists involved in an attack at a checkpoint.