The Israeli occupation military forced an 80-year-old Palestinian man to act as a human shield in Gaza by tying an explosive cord around his neck and threatening to have his head blown off, an investigation has found.
A senior officer from the occupation army’s Nahal Brigade tied the explosive cord around the man’s neck before he was ordered to scout houses the Israeli outlet The Hottest Place in Hell found in an investigation.
After eight hours, soldiers ordered the man to flee with his wife from their home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood in May, said +972 magazine, which reported the piece in partnership with The Hottest Place in Hell.
But when another Israeli battalion spotted the elderly couple on the street, they were shot dead on the spot, according to Israeli occupation soldiers present at the scene.
The Israeli soldiers had initially encountered the couple in their home. They told Arabic-speaking soldiers that they were unable to flee to southern Gaza due to mobility difficulties.
But even in his condition, the soldiers forced the unnamed 80-year-old to walk ahead of them with his cane, while his wife was detained in their house.
Additional details of the methods of warfare used in Gaza by the Israeli military and the deployment of civilians as human shields, then executed. The amount of evidence on the use of the practice in Gaza is unprecedented. It is clearly a military policy. https://t.co/WE9ZhOcZdB pic.twitter.com/GbTagI6Wjy
— Nicola Perugini (@PeruginiNic) February 16, 2025
A soldier told the investigation that the Israeli commander had decided to use the Palestinian couple as “mosquitoes”, referring to a procedure where the Israeli army forces Palestinian civilians to serve as human shields to protect the Israeli forces from being shot or blown up.
“He entered each house before us so that if there were [explosives] or a militant inside, he would [take the hit] instead of us,” one soldier said.
“He was told that if he did anything wrong or didn’t follow orders, the soldier behind him would pull the cord, and his head would be torn from his body.”
The man was forced to act as a human shield for eight hours, before he was ordered, along with his wife, to walk towards the so-called “humanitarian zone” in southern Gaza.
But the soldiers did not care to tell nearby Israeli divisions that the couple was going to pass through the area, according to the testimonies.
“After 100 meters, the other battalion saw them and immediately shot them,” a soldier said. “They died like that, in the street.”
More reports emerge on the Israeli occupation army’s war crimes committed against the Palestinian people throughout 16 months of genocidal war in Gaza, with the atrocities of the so-called “most moral army in the world” are being exposed.
Source: Agencies
