A 12-year old Palestinian boy was shot dead by Israeli soldiers while playing in front of his home in al-Fawwar refugee camp south of Hebron in the southern West Bank early Sunday, medics told Ma’an.

Palestinian medical sources at Hebron’s al-Ahli Hospital told Ma’an that Khalil Muhammad Ahmad al-Anati arrived at the hospital after being shot in the back.

They said that the gunshot entered through the victim’s lower abdomen and exited through his groin.

Doctors tried their best to resuscitate the boy and stop severe bleeding, but they announced his death shortly after he arrived in the emergency room.

Medics told AFP that Khalil was 11.

Locals told Ma’an that shortly before the boy was killed an Israeli military force escorted Israeli engineers into a neighborhood known as Nabat al-Haffara for unknown reasons.

“We don’t know what they (the Israelis) were doing,” Yussef al-Anati told AFP, crying, his shirt soaked in blood after carrying his nephew to hospital.

“Khalil was playing in front of the house, then we heard gunfire. The kid was screaming and fell down,” he said. “He was shot in the back and the bullet exited through his stomach.”

A few young men hurled stones at the soldiers in response to the military incursion, and the soldiers subsequently opened fire at the boys, locals said.

A bullet hit al-Anati while he was standing in front of his home.

He was evacuated to the hospital in a private car.

Al-Fawwar is located south of Hebron near an Israeli military checkpoint that divides a number of local Palestinian communities close to the local illegal Israeli settlement of Haggay.

At least 17 Palestinians have been killed across the West Bank in the last month, amid widespread public anger and growing protests over an Israeli assault on Gaza that has killed more than 1,915 Palestinians in the last four weeks.

An Israeli military spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.

(Ma’an – www.maannews.net)