HEBRON // Israeli troops killed a 65-year-old Palestinian on Friday during a raid to arrest his neighbour who was affiliated with Hamas, the dead man’s wife and local residents said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the raid, which followed the release from Palestinian jails on Thursday of six members of the Islamist Hamas group.
Five of the men were from Hebron, and one of them, Wael Bitar, arrested by the Israelis, lives one storey below the victim, residents said.
Palestinian security sources said the four other Hamas ex-prisoners from Hebron also were detained by the Israelis. The dead man, Amr Qawasme, was asleep when soldiers broke into his home before dawn. His wife, Sobheye, said they brushed past her into the bedroom, where she heard several shots fired. When she went in, she found her husband in a pool of blood.
"I was praying when they entered. I do not know how they opened the door. They put their hand to my mouth and a rifle to my head," she told Reuters after Qawasme's body was removed.
"I was shocked. They did not allow me to talk. I asked them, 'What did you do?' They asked me to shut up."
Reuters Television footage showed Qawasme's sodden bed and bullet casings on the floor.
Israel and the US-backed West Bank administration of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have a common foe in Hamas, which rejects Middle East peace efforts and controls the Gaza Strip, the other half of the Palestinian polity.
But the Israelis sometimes chafe at Abbas's handling of Hamas, which has widespread Palestinian grassroots support, and have at time mounted their own military raids against the Islamists in the West Bank.
