Palestinian Territory - The Israeli army continues to use its tanks to deliberately run over live Palestinian civilians and crush their bodies, in addition to using civilians as human shields, in the ground operations of its crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip that has been ongoing since 7 October 2023.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor field team documented a compound and comprehensive crime against a civilian family comprising an elderly woman and her four children, including three young women and a one-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter. The family was attacked with gunfire and bombs after Israeli forces stormed their house on Thursday evening, 27 June. They were later taken outside and detained for over three hours despite their injuries in their home, near Israeli tanks in a dangerous combat zone, where they were used as human shields. The 65-year-old mother, identified as Safiya Hassan Musa Al-Jamal, was run over by an Israeli tank and killed in front of her son.
After the soldiers entered the tank, it started to move backward and ran over my mother. When I saw the scene, I thought I had gone insane and began to cry and scream
Muhannad Al-Jamal, 28, a resident of Gaza
In his testimony to the Euro-Med Monitor team, the elderly woman's son, Muhannad Al-Jamal, 28, said: "We were living in Al-Nazaz Street in Al-Shuja'iya, east of Gaza, when at approximately 10 a.m. on Thursday we were surprised to hear the sound of shelling and explosions. We made an unsuccessful attempt to leave. All around us was chaos. We went inside, up to the first floor, and sat in a room in the center of the house. As we were sitting there, we noticed that Israeli tanks were moving closer to the area. Then the bombing started to get more intense, and I saw that many of the tanks had turned and were now positioned on the adjacent land of our neighbours, bulldozing and destroying it before raising the Israeli flag on the property. I was with my mother, my three sisters, and niece in the room. We were very careful not to make any noise. At the end of the afternoon or before sunset, the tanks began firing shells toward my brother's ground floor flat in our home. I got my family together and we sat in one of the rooms, reciting the Shahada (a statement of belief that Muslims recite before death) and waiting to see what would happen to us.
"After sunset, we heard gunfire in the street, and then I realised that the soldiers had stormed the house after blowing up a wall. When they found us in the room, they started firing at the walls randomly and threw five bombs amid gunfire. They were shouting in Hebrew, and we did not understand what they were saying. I was hit by shrapnel in my back, along with my sisters. My mother was struck by a large piece of shrapnel in her chest while my sisters were screaming, "We are civilians." The soldiers then moved forward one by one, yelling, "Shut up," before dragging me away. They forced me to take off my clothes and put me against the wall. After my mother and sisters entered with a female soldier, the soldiers pointed their weapons at me for half an hour.
"They asked me to carry my mother on my back. After that, a different soldier ordered me to place her on a stretcher, so I did. I then carried her with another soldier out through the opening that the army attack had made. We then went to a nearby area and were placed in a tank, where I placed the stretcher in front of me before exiting. After that, they brought me back to the house. They later took me down and handcuffed me. My sisters were at the tank's door when a soldier arrived at roughly 9:45 p.m. and asked them to wait before he removed the handcuffs and put shackles on my hands and a blindfold on my eyes. He stopped me on a sand hill, and he was shining a laser at me. I felt that they were going to execute me. Then he turned on the tank and ordered me to get into it. It was a different tank from the one my mother was in. Later, the tank shifted and swung around. After that, they dropped me in what appeared to be a set of stairs, and I had no idea where I was. I was asked to follow their directions as I moved. This went on for about 15 minutes while rude remarks were made. Then I was grabbed by the neck by one of the soldiers. After I moved fifty meters, they put me in yet another tank. I moved in, then they took me down and put me in a tank that contained the stretcher that we used to transport my mother. Later on, the tank moved.
"I had assumed that we would be taken to a medical facility so that my mother could be treated, but instead they tackled me and my mother, putting her on the ground. After a few minutes, I realised we had arrived at the Mushtaha Roundabout, at the end of Al-Nazzaz Street. I inquired as to my location. "Your mother will be taken by ambulance," he said. My mom was on the ground, unconscious. There were two tanks on the right and left surrounding the roundabout. After the soldiers entered the tank, it started to move backward and ran over my mother.
