An 80-year-old Palestinian was found dead early Wednesday (January 12) in a village in the northern occupied West Bank after being detained and left handcuffed by Israeli soldiers, Palestinian officials said.
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A unit of thirty to forty Israeli soldiers ambushed at 2 a.m. (00:00 GMT) in the middle of the village of Jiljiliya, north of the Palestinian city of Ramallah, village chief Fouad Moutee told AFP. .
“
They stopped the cars in the middle of the village and arrested the passengers who were inside and handcuffed them
,” he said.
Abandoned in a building under construction
Omar Abdalmajeed As'ad, who was returning home after visiting relatives, was arrested, handcuffed, beaten, abandoned in a building under construction, and found dead in the early hours of Wednesday after the soldiers left the village, said he added.
In a brief statement, the Palestinian health ministry confirmed this account, adding that the old man had died of a "
heart attack
" before he arrived at the hospital.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment on the affair, which arose after clashes on Tuesday between students at Birzeit University, near Ramallah, and Israeli soldiers, and an attempt to ram car attack wounding an Israeli soldier near a settlement.
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Israeli forces regularly make arrests in Palestinian communities in the West Bank, a territory occupied since 1967 by the Jewish state, where 2.9 million Palestinians and 475,000 Israelis now live in illegal settlements under international law.
