Palestinian dead in Israeli hospital raid

HEBRON — Undercover Israeli agents killed a Palestinian in a West Bank hospital while arresting his cousin wanted for a knife attack, in what Amnesty International condemned Thursday as an apparent "extrajudicial killing".

The Palestinian health ministry said 21 agents participated in the overnight raid to capture Azzam Shalaldeh, a patient at Al Ahli Hospital in Hebron.

Israeli forces said they shot a man who tried to attack them, but a relative who said he was there accused the agents of having gunned him down in cold blood.

Palestinian officials and the family identified the victim as Azzam's cousin, 27-year-old Abdallah Azzam Shalaldeh.

Azzam himself, aged around 20, was arrested.

According to the hospital director, Jihad Shawar, the agents were disguised as Palestinian civilians transporting a woman about to give birth.

Surveillance video purportedly from the hospital posted online appeared to back his account.

Men in plainclothes, some in Palestinian keffiyeh scarves and others apparently wearing fake beards, enter with someone in a wheelchair.

Eight minutes later, footage showed the agents with guns drawn leaving with someone else in the wheelchair, presumably the suspect.

"They banned the medical team from moving and they took control of the surgery department, went to [Azzam's] room and banned anyone from entering," Shawar said.

"When they left, the man was found bleeding and [staff] tried to save his life, but he died."

Israel's Shin Bet confirmed the raid, saying the man shot had "attacked" officers in an attempt to prevent them from arresting his cousin.

It claimed he was behind an October 25 stabbing that seriously wounded an Israeli near the Mezad settlement outside Hebron.

Amnesty condemned the killing.

"The fact that Abdullah Shalaldah was shot in the head and upper body suggests this was an extrajudicial execution," the organisation's Middle East director, Philip Luther, said.

Bilal Shalaldeh, Azzam's brother who said he was in the room at the time of the raid, disputed the Israeli account.

"They arrested my brother and tied me up," he told AFP.

"My cousin was in the bathroom and when he opened the bathroom door, and without any warning or any words, they shot at him five times."

Cristina Carreno, medical coordinator with Medicins Sans Frontiers, told AFP the raid may have breached the Geneva Conventions.

The organisation provided Azzam with psychosocial care after his arrival in hospital nearly three weeks ago, she confirmed.

Israel must "comply with international humanitarian law and respect the special status granted to medical facilities and the wounded", she said.

Hebron, the West Bank’s largest city, has long been a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, once dubbed a “sleeping lion” by late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat.