JENIN, West Bank - A human rights group called for an investigation into the death Thursday of a mentally disabled Palestinian man who had been wounded by the Israelis during a West Bank arrest operation.
According to neighbors' accounts, Israeli troops entered the town of Qabatiya before dawn on Feb. 7 to arrest an Islamic Jihad militant.
As the soldiers prepared an ambush, the mentally disabled man, 56-year-old Taysir Nazal, emerged from his home, the neighbors said. Soldiers fired three shots and hit Nazal in his legs, said relatives and a neighbor, Omar al-Sohu.
"They didn't call on him to stop, and after he was hit, they left him for a half hour," al-Sohu said. "Then two soldiers came and started to talk to him in Arabic."
The Israeli military said it was checking the circumstances of the incident and did not immediately comment.
Nazal was hit several times in the legs. Doctors operated several times and amputated part of one leg, but he died on Thursday, doctors said.
The Israeli rights group B'Tselem called for a military investigation. "From our research we see a pattern, a sort of norm ... that is expressed in shooting when a door is opened or the soldiers think someone is trying to flee, when in fact the soldiers are not acting in self-defense," B'Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli said.
Israel has killed several mentally disabled Palestinians in recent years.
Israel conducts arrest operations against Palestinians in West Bank towns almost nightly.
The West Bank, like Gaza and Arab east Jerusalem, is a Palestinian territory illegally occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.
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