Geneva, May 25 (RHC)-- A Geneva-based rights group says Israel is using American weapons to kill Palestinian "children without restraint" in the besieged Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, calling on the United States to stop shipping arms and military equipment to the occupying regime.
In a statement issued in Geneva, the Defense for Children International (DCI) strongly urged Washington to halt its flow of arms to the Tel Aviv regime after Israeli soldiers killed two teenage boys in the city of Jenin two days earlier.
“The United States must stop sending weapons to the Israeli military that are used to kill Palestinian children without restraint, whether in Gaza or Jenin,” the organization said.
Two 15-year-old Palestinian teenagers were shot dead by Israeli snipers in the Jenin refugee camp on Tuesday morning. “Mahmoud Amjad Ismail Hamadneh & Osama Mohammad Naim Abdulatif Hujair, both 15, were shot and killed by Israeli forces during a military incursion into Jenin yesterday. Mahmoud was killed while riding his bike on his way home from school,” the rights group said in a post on X on Wednesday.
The Israeli regime has markedly stepped up its aggression across the West Bank since October 7, when it launched a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Health Ministry says more than 500 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the Gaza war.
Israel has killed 35,709 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza since the onset of the current war. Palestinian children are one of the most vulnerable demographics affected by the U.S.-Israeli genocide.
The Israeli onslaught on Gaza has inflicted immense suffering on innocent civilians, particularly children, whose lives have been shattered by airstrikes, displacement, and loss.
Meanwhile, the Chilean muralist, Alan Zárate, commemorated the thousands of innocent children killed in the war-torn Gaza Strip with a poignant mural titled “The Fallen Child.” The mural is located at the Cerro Blanco metro station in Recoleta, Santiago.
Back in April, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said children face shattered lives in Gaza, adding that at least 17,000 children in the blockaded territory are unaccompanied or separated from their families.