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25 Feb 2025 11:17
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  •   Home > News > International

    Palestinian mum seeks justice after 2yo dies as IDF targets Jenin

    The Israeli military says its soldiers fired into the home in a small village near the city of Jenin because they believed Palestinian militants were inside. Instead, the gunfire left a young mother covered in her only child's blood.


    There are four small, circular bullet holes in the windows of Taima Bassam Asous's house in the West Bank.

    Warning: This story contains details and images some readers may find disturbing

    There's a hole in her couch and another in the wall near the bedroom door, down low, near the floor.

    They were made when Israeli soldiers fired into the house from a neighbouring home diagonally across the street.

    One of those bullets didn't hit a couch or the wall — it hit Taima Bassam Asous' two-year-old daughter Leila al Khatib in the head.

    "It had passed by her forehead. I called my mother, she told me, 'It is OK'. Leila cried for a while, then I looked at my hands and they were dripping with blood," Ms Bassam Asous says.

    "So I turned her and found her head as if it was empty from the back, only skin."

    The Israeli military said its soldiers fired into the home in a small village near the city of Jenin because they believed Palestinian militants were inside.

    Instead, the gunfire left a young mother covered in her only child's blood.

    The family had been having dinner when they heard gunfire and rushed to take shelter in the bedroom.

    "It was horrific," she said, "not only that there were injuries and death, but it was absolute horror."

    Her father took Leila and tried to get medical help, but Ms Bassam Asous said he was stopped by Israeli soldiers.

    "My father told them the little girl was hit by a bullet but they did not let him out," she said.

    "They arrested him and gave Leila to her grandmother. She started running and looking for an ambulance. They did not let the ambulance come to take her. They came to see what is wrong with her and said that she is only injured.

    "They returned her and delayed the ambulance, although they knew she might die. So, when she reached the hospital, she was in a very critical condition."

    Leila died soon after at the hospital.

    The Israeli military denied soldiers had obstructed the ambulance.

    "Immediately after they opened fire, the soldiers identified injuries among uninvolved civilians who were present in the structure and coordinated the rapid arrival of the Red Crescent to evacuate them," the Israel Defense Forces told the ABC in a statement.

    It said soldiers had called out warnings to the residents before opening fire, something disputed by Ms Bassam Asous and her family.

    "The security forces operate in a highly complex and challenging environment in Judea and Samaria (the biblical names for the West Bank, used by the Israeli government), in which terrorists carry out terrorist attacks under the cover of the civilian population," the IDF statement said.

    "The IDF regrets any harm caused to uninvolved civilians and takes various measures to prevent such incidents."

    Leila al Khatib is one of 13 Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank in this year alone, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

    The United Nations said as of February 17, more than 50 people  have been killed and 40,000 displaced in three cities since the Israeli military began a major operation in the north of the occupied Palestinian territory.

    Israel's military said the operation was a response to an uptick in attacks from armed Palestinian groups. 

    "Since the October 7th massacre, there has been a significant increase in terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley area, with over 2,000 attempted attacks occurring since the beginning of the war," the IDF said in a statement. 

    "The IDF conducts counterterrorism operations to apprehend suspects, many of them are part of the Hamas terrorist organisation."

    Combat engineers with heavy equipment have been moving through refugee camps in the cities of Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas, demolishing homes and infrastructure they said were being used to make and store weapons.

    Israeli authorities have also sent tanks to Jenin, in the first deployment of its kind in the area in more than two decades.

    Jenin refugee camp resident Halimeh al Zawaideh told the ABC the operation had destroyed roads, water and sewage pipes as well as electricity infrastructure.

    "Everything is bad in the camp," she said.

    "The roads, no water, no light, the houses were damaged, the windows, the tanks for the water on top of buildings were damaged. Even cars on the streets were damaged."

     

    Ms Al Zawaideh is staying in a school that's been turned into a shelter for dozens of camp residents.

    She said Palestinian security forces besieged the camp for 45 days, attempting to dismantle militant cells inside before the Israeli soldiers moved in.

    "There is no hope," Ms Al Zawaideh said.

    "The only hope is to go back to our houses. But our houses are damaged, no windows, no doors."

    The main road in front of Jenin's hospital is one of many that has been torn up in the city .

    Medical workers, the charity Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organisation accuse Israeli forces of obstructing emergency crews and impeding access to healthcare.

    The director of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Jenin, Mahmoud Sadi, told the ABC the infrastructure was collapsing.

    "You cannot walk or reach some of these areas. You come across military vehicles and bulldozers. All of these factors hindered the work of medical staff," he said.

    "You cannot access the areas freely. You cannot provide humanitarian services freely."

    Brice De le Vingne, an emergency unit coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, agreed.

    "You have a heavy military operation that blocks access to care for the population," she said.

    "You have also people wounded that cannot reach hospital to seek for care. You have people dying or having heavy consequences because they cannot have access to proper care," she said.

    The Israeli military said it needed to make sure ambulances and healthcare facilities were not being used by militant groups.

    "In several concerning cases, the terrorist activity was carried out while abusing ambulances and medical institutions.  In this way, terrorists hid in medical institutions and inside ambulances and committed attacks using them," the IDF said in a statement.

    "As part of the efforts to thwart terrorism, in some instances, IDF forces are left no option but to inspect ambulances leaving the camps and villages while trying to reduce the delay as much as possible in order to mitigate harm to those not involved and to the medical treatment."

    It's not known how long Israel's military intends the operation to last.

    Taima Bassam Asous doesn't want anyone else to be killed and believes there should be some accountability for her daughter's death.

    "What happened is barbaric, chaos," she said.

    "There is no humanity. They [the Israelis] have no souls. 

    "I do not imagine that if a two-and-a half-year-old kid was killed anywhere else, in any state, things would remain the same. The world should do something."


    ABC




    © 2025 ABC Australian Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved

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