The United States State Department on Monday prompted Israel to examine the death of a 17-year-old American resident in the West Bank recently.
Tawfiq Ajak, 17, was fatally fired on Friday near the town of al-Mazraa Al-Sharqiya, northeast of Ramallah.
“We have called for an urgent investigation to determine the circumstance of his death,” State Department representative Vedant Patel informed press reporters at a rundown in Washington on Monday.
The United States is “devastated about the killing” and is remaining to “engage closely with the government of Israel to ascertain as much information as possible,” Patel stated. He included that the head of the United States Office of Palestinian Affairs has actually gone to Ajaq’s household to use acknowledgements and the consular office in Jerusalem will certainly “continue assisting” them.
Tawfiq was birthed and elevated near New Orleans, Louisiana. He transferred to the West Bank in 2015 with his moms and dads and 4 brother or sisters, to reconnect with their Palestinian heritage, according to Al Jazeera.
His relative Joe Abdel Qaki informed AJ that Tawfiq was barbecuing in the area outside the town when he was fired, when in the head and when in the breast. He passed away heading to the medical facility. According to Abdel Qaki, Israeli soldiers asked him and various other Palestinians that attempted to get to Tawfiq to reveal them their documents, postponing the rescue.
Tawfiq Hafez Tawfiq Ajaq, 17, a U.S. resident, was eliminated the other day as an Israeli inhabitant and Israeli pressures opened up fire on his auto in the inhabited West Bank. It stays uncertain whether the inhabitant or a soldier terminated the bullet that struck him in the head. https://t.co/KNXxMRoeqjpic.twitter.com/nYEULLlWCM
— Defense for Children (@DCIPalestine) January 20, 2024
“Tawfiq is an American child who was chased and shot at by an Israeli settler, then Israeli forces pulled up and continued shooting,” Miranda Cleland from the not-for-profit Defense for Children Palestine, stated on X (previously Twitter).
Israeli authorities stated they had actually gotten a record of a “firearm discharge, ostensibly involving an off-duty law enforcement officer, a soldier and a civilian.” They did not recognize the shooter, however keep in mind that the people targeted “purportedly engaged in rock-throwing activities along Highway 60.”
At his kid’s funeral service on Saturday, Hafez Ajaq raged that he as an American taxpayer was bearing the cost for Israeli “killer machines” to “kill our own children.”
Some 369 Palestinians – 95 of them minors – have actually been eliminated in the West Bank given that October in 2015, when Israel stated a full-scale battle versus Hamas. The Gaza-based armed team had actually eliminated around 1,200 Israelis in close-by negotiations in a collection of raids on October 7. Since after that, nearly 25,000 Palestinians in the territory have actually been eliminated, according to regional health and wellness authorities.
While South Africa has actually charged Israel of genocide prior to the International Court of Justice, White House representative John Kirby informed press reporters recently that the United States didn’t have “any indications that there’s deliberate efforts to commit war crimes” by the Israeli armed forces.