B’tselem: Israeli Soldiers Locked Palestinian Family in Storeroom, Assaulted, Abused them

February 4, 2022 Blog, News
Six members of the Salhab family spent the night at the hospital after Israeli raid. (Photo: courtesy of B'tselem)

Israeli soldiers held a Palestinian family, including 7 minors, hostage in a storeroom, where they were attacked and beaten, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem revealed in a report published on Thursday.

According to the report, the 21-member Salhab family, based in the Khirbet Qalqas neighborhood in Hebron (Al-Khalil), were disturbed after midnight on December 12, 2021, by 20 Israeli soldiers who demanded the whereabouts of their 24-year old son Anas, a student at Hebron University.

Mahmoud Salhab, 57, told B’tselem that the soldiers locked Anas in his room on the ground floor of the building and locked the rest of the family, including seven minors, in a storeroom as ten Israeli soldiers stood guard.

Mahmoud also recounted haunting details from that day, such as the harrowing screams of their son who was being shouted at and beaten in the adjacent room.

When Mahmoud’s son, 16-year-old Ibrahim,  protested against his brother’s abuse, the soldiers attacked and beat him too, the report says.

Moreover, Israeli soldiers dragged Ibrahim’s 24-year-old cousin, Osama, along the storeroom floor, resulting in a head injury as an empty bowl smashed on his head. The soldiers called a military ambulance that took him to Soroka Medical Centre in Beersheba.

“About 10 other soldiers attacked me. They punched me, beat me with their rifle butts, kicked me and then knocked me down. I kept shouting and asking them to stop hitting me. I asked what I’d done to them. They just told me to shut up and kept beating me,” B’tselem reports Ibrahim as saying.

At around 2:30 am, the Isreali soldiers handcuffed and blindfolded Anas as they left to drive for several hours until they arrived at the illegal Etzion settlement bloc, south of Bethlehem, at 8:30 am and held him inside a military jeep until noon with no food, water or access to a toilet.

Anas, according to the report, was interrogated by an Israeli officer, who warned him not to participate in illegal activities, after which he was released and sent home with other students who had been called in to receive the same warning.

The horrific incident resulted in five family members being taken to the Alia Governmental Hospital in Hebron.

Night raids by the Israeli army are a near-daily practice in the occupied West Bank.

(MEMO, PC, Social Media)

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