A senior Israeli officer in Gaza tied an explosive around the neck of an 80-year-old Palestinian man to force him to act as a human shield, and the man and his wife were later killed by Israeli soldiers, the Israeli media outlet The Hottest Place in Hell has reported.
Israeli soldiers present at the scene told the media outlet that the incident occurred in May 2024 in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood. Israeli soldiers found the elderly couple in their home, who said they didn’t evacuate due to mobility issues.
“They said they had nowhere to run and that they couldn’t evacuate to Khan Younis. The man was walking with a cane, and they said they simply wouldn’t be able to walk all the way there,” one of the soldiers said.
The Israeli soldiers then separated the man from his wife and tied an explosive to him, threatening that his head would be blown off if he tried to run away even though he had a cane.
“They explained to him that if he did something wrong or not as we wanted, the person behind him would pull the rope, and his head would be severed from his body. He walked around with us like that for eight hours, even though he was an 80-year-old man and even though he couldn’t escape us,” one soldier said.
After eight hours of checking for explosives, the man was returned to his wife. Then, Israeli soldiers ordered the elderly couple to evacuate to the south on foot. The report said the soldiers didn’t inform other nearby battalions that the elderly couple was heading south, and after only walking for 100 meters, they were shot and killed.
“After a hundred meters, the second battalion saw them and shot them on the spot. They died like that, in the street,” a soldier said.
Israeli media has previously revealed that the IDF had an “open fire” policy in many areas of Gaza, meaning any Palestinian who entered it would be shot even if they were unarmed civilians, or in this case, elderly people walking with a cane. Haaretz has reported that unarmed civilians who were killed would be counted as “terrorists.”
The practice of using Palestinian civilians as human shields became widespread in Gaza, so much so that the Israelis gave it a name. Palestinians detained in Gaza and used as human shields are called “mosquitos,” while Palestinians brought in from Israel for that purpose are called “wasps.” The Hottest Place in Hell referred to the use of the 80-year-old man as a human shield as the “Mosquito Procedure.”
While the IDF claims it doesn’t allow the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, a soldier said it has become official policy.
“The Mosquito Procedure is fully institutionalized, and it’s a very gray area within the army,” a soldier said. “It’s something that comes down as an explicit order from the battalion commander level and below. But somewhere at the brigade commander level, they completely deny it. When problems start, they push the responsibility downward and say not to do it.”
